Archive of Our Own

Zandik always corrected in red. Crimson red, akin to his eyes and similar to the colour of arterial blood. Most of the students in his class would measure their misery solely by the amount of crossed out words in an essay handed back to them. And his commentary? Ruthless. It was cutting and cold, definitely making some of them to question their career choice. Others, the more lucky ones, got away with just a few corrections that always ended in a bold, red dot, and a stiff ‘good’. Underlined.

She, however, dotted her I’s with hearts. Her pen was a shade of red pink. Her commentaries consisted of subtle encouragement and soft corrections, often topped with a compliment or a praise that made people smile just a little wider. She wasn’t a professor like him, but her job consisted of deleting paragraphs, crossing off sentences and words and swapping them from one to another. People came to her not with homework or exams, but their dreams. Books, articles, a memoir for their family that they wrote after finding some letters in the attic. That is precisely why she handled those manuscripts and drafts like glass that could shatter at any moment—because stories and creations were just as fragile.

He had first come to her on a rainy day. His draft had been thick enough to act as a paper press, and she had joked about Darwin and his first draft of the Origin of Species. It didn’t even make him laugh.

Zandik’s fragile dreams had been encased in a thick layer of sophisticated words like ‘adenynyl cyclase’, ‘enkephalins’ and ‘medial geniculate complex’. There were no magical, faraway worlds or tales that made galaxies look fickle and dull in comparison—he spoke about hard facts, about the fractal neural organisation of thought and neural coding and disentanglement. When her editing house told her that they thought she was the person for the job because of her ability to ‘adapt’, she considered tearing her hair out or crying, but eventually settled on baking a pie filled with her frustrations. Whoever had spread the lie that baked goods tasted better when they were filled with love had been wrong, in her opinion. Her best plates had been done in days of frustrations, tears and aches.

Their first meeting had been in the university cafe of the science faculty where he worked at. A cold and intimidating place for someone like her, who had spent her college years in beautiful, historic buildings, buried under stacks of books and people who had many things to say. Scientists were often sharper and much more rude.

He had ordered coffee. Black, no sugar, at odds with the tea she had gotten for herself. She usually had the habit of meeting up with her clients to talk about their work and get to know them a little better so she could do their dreams justice, but Zandik wasn’t like that.

“What do you have in mind when publishing your work?” She had asked him. “By that, I mean, what would you like people to take from it?”

Inspiration. Knowledge. Passion.

“I doubt most people are on the required level to comprehend what I’m trying to explain,” he answered, with a tone that sounded arrogant. “It would be a noteworthy effort to even pick it up. Otherwise, I don’t bother myself with dreams of what I want people to think of me or my work.”

She blinked, looking down into her cup.

“Did I say something incorrect?” He asked.

“No, of course not. It’s just a wildly different answer from what I am used to…”

Zandik exhaled, bringing his own cup to his lips as his crimson eyes scanned her, head to toe. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

“You work with different people than me, I assume. My coworker mentioned that you are the editor of a few novel bestsellers.”

“Yes, a few.”

“Novels—” he waved a hand as he spoke— “are far from what I am trying to write. What I want is to explain what I am working on in a language that can be understood by those who are skilled in my field. I’m not interested in becoming a bestseller.”

“Ah, I understand, Dr. Zandik. I am not trying to change your work, I’m just here to edit it,” she said. “I just try to get to know my clients beforehand. A work says a lot about an author, and vice versa.”

Zandik cocked his head with a hint of a bemused smile on his lips.

“And what does it say about me, madam?”

She considered the answer.

“I don’t know that yet.”

She left that meeting with her notepad full of words, definitions, and notes about his explanations. It was the first time that she had filled up the pages with something other than observations about the author or their motivations.

Immediately after, she lent out books on neuroscience from the library. By the time their third meeting came (the second one had been interrupted by another professor who desperately needed Zandik’s opinion on something), there was a stack of scientific books on her night stand that she was tearing through with a black pen.

Only then, when the stack of ‘to be read’ books started getting smaller and the one of ‘read books’ grew, she picked up his manuscript. Not a moment earlier. She sat down with a cup of her favourite tea, a mix of earl grey, and went over the first chapter with a red pen.

Their fourth meeting was in a cafe of her choosing. A cosy spot in the middle of a tight street with a cat that lazed around on the plush cushions and a barista that smelled strongly of vanilla. Zandik had scrunched his nose at the menu, which was filled with too many complex latte’s and flavoured teas and too few simple names.

“There is something interesting that I noticed,” she mentioned as he sat down, sliding over her notebook to him. She mostly used paper, he noticed. “On the section where you explain the motor mirror system, you use the word ‘heart-sharing’ a couple of times. I’m led to believe its a mistranslation, because you refer to it as ‘empathy’ in other sentences.”

Zandik glanced down at her handwriting. He studied the bullet points that she had listed, presumably to ask him about it. Most of the requests were for him to explain a term in more detail.

“Heart-sharing,” he mused thoughtfully, his finger curling under his chin. “It’s a mistranslation, yes. It’s the literal translation of the word ‘empathy’ in my native language.”

That piqued her curiosity. His features were hardly European, that much she had noticed, but she had never asked him about it.

“What’s your native language?”

“Farsi,” he answered.

She hummed thoughtfully, her head tilting. “Heart-sharing is a beautiful word for empathy.”

“It’s understood as the joining of heart, co-sharing. I ignore the linguistics.”

“Language influences how we view and understand the world around us, but also how we process our own emotions. It’s far from neuroscience, but it’s still a lovely topic. It’s a field called linguistic relativity or determinism.”

This time, it was him who looked up in curiosity, raising his eyebrows and prompting her to continue.

“Well, look at metaphors, for example. Some authors love to use metaphors, others think that the more objective a language is, the better. Take Stephen King for example, or you, versus Kafka. You see the world in strict facts while Kafka wrote a whole book based on an allegory.

Metaphors also weave into everyday speech. Argument is war, time is money, status is height. Your criticism is right on target and demolishes other arguments; you waste time or live on borrowed seconds; you can rise from the dead, be in high spirits, wake up, fall asleep. Time is perceived differently—it can be wasted or gained in English, but it passes through you in Arabic. In some East African languages, there isn’t even a word for future, because time has to be experienced in order to be real. You make time through events, memories, and experience. It’s not a currency, because currency means exchange.”

Zandik stayed silent, looking up at her with his unbearably intense crimson eyes.

“I… never would have thought of such a thing.”

She smiled. “I’m always happy to explain.”

Their eyes met. She wasn’t willing to pull her gaze away, because eyes were a language all on their own, and his own were not a dialect she understood yet. She wanted to.

But that would come with time. It would not be borrowed, but told. Time is a storyteller, not a cruel businessman unwilling to spare a penny. It was gentle, it was the breeze on your skin, the motion of the waves and the moments when it felt like it wasn’t passing at all.

From that day on, Zandik allowed himself to walk a little slower. He had always been a man who crammed as much as possible in little time and called it efficiency, but her words had a way to settle deep within his mind. He never had the time to notice things quite like she did. Whenever they met up, her eyes would stray to the booth behind them or the couple that passed by her side, or how the light met the side walk, flickering between one shadow and another.

The fifth time he got her by surprise. Zandik was a man who came right on time, never a minute late, and yet today he knocked on her office fifteen minutes past four.

She raised her head, her expression clearing.

“Dr. Zandik! I wasn’t expecting you. Forgive the mess of my office.”

He looked around at the walls lined with bookshelves. They were organised by theme, and then by authors. He saw a large variety of them: Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolkien, Murakami, Dazai, Camus, Milton, even religious texts, more fantasy novels and essays. There was a whole section of the manuscripts she was probably looking through at the same time he worked on his; a stack of cheap, shitty romance novels; and a pile of books on science and neuroscience.

“Have you read all of them?” He asked, holding his coat over his arm as he scanned the place.

“No, of course not. I have even more back at my place. The amount would scare you.”

“Are the cheap romances also part of the cultural enrichment?”

“Ah, those are for when I feel frustrated.”

He picked up one of the first, frowning down at the cover, before flipping it open at a random spot. His eyes saw the writing first. Red, angry cursive correcting whole paragraphs. Scratched out words, even entire paragraphs with a big ‘UNNECESSARY’ on the side.

Zandik looked up again in amusement.

“I am supposing you don’t get paid for such slander.”

“No. That’s my anger talking,” she answered. “It’s truly not my fault that they need better editors. One of my coworker keeps gifting me those, and I simply cannot help myself.”

He set the copy aside with a glint in his eye and finally sat down, smoothly draping his coat over the back of the chair. She had a book on her desk that she was lazily reading, a steaming cup of coffee by her side. He took a look at the title. Marianela, by Benito Pérez Galdós.

Zandik nodded towards it. “Do you like it?”

“Hm? Yes, I do. Have you read it?”

“No,” he answered, before looking sideways in an almost abashed expression. “I’m afraid I am not as well-read as you, madam. I usually spend my time with scientific papers and essays.”

“It’s a lovely book. Explores internal and external beauty. The plot is about a blind boy who falls in love with an ugly, poor girl because of her singing. His family ends up bringing a renowned doctor to their town in order to heal him, and he vows to marry her after the surgery, because she believes her beautiful.”

A hum left him. Perhaps he should read more novels. He was never the type, because he never had time to sit down and read something that wasn’t a paper (apart from the occasional Camus book, perhaps even Oscar Wilde). He had also never been particularly interested, but her words managed to capture his attention.

“That sounds fascinating. I usually read scientific books.”

She nodded towards the section of science book she had. “If you’d like to borrow one, go ahead. I don’t mind.”

“There are a lot of books about neuroscience there,” he noted with a hint of a smile. Descartes’ error by Antonio Damasio, Livewired by David Eagleman. “You take your job very seriously, I’m seeing.”

“I’d like to say that, yes.”

“I have a few textbooks that could be more useful.” Zandik turned his gaze back to her. “More scientific, less written by entrepreneurs.”

She smiled. “Do you have something against pop science and neuromarketing?”

“The amount of misinformation would land me in the hospital by the third page.”

The woman in front of him stifled a laugh, bookmarking her novel and putting it away. She shuffled through the desk drawers until she found the manuscript he had first brought to her in a thick folder, setting it between them.

“I got through three more chapters. Still slow, but I’m getting faster. By the end of this work, I might even deserve a doctorate.”

“Hm, maybe after a few more classes,” he replied with a tug of his lips as he leaned forwards, ready to be questioned by her once again.

They talked about his manuscript. He explained to her a couple of concepts (did not mention that she had asked him about a few things twice already), but then she moved on to mention that the earliest studies of the nervous system date back to ancient Egypt, and from ancient Egypt they moved on to mummification, because the brain was removed regularly and the heart was the seat of intelligence, and this was a belief dismantled by the Greek physician Hippocrates, and Hippocrates was one of the outstanding figures in medicine, which was a field Zandik loved to talk about. And, did you know that he was the first person who believe that diseases were caused naturally, not by gods or superstitions? Oh, and he learned that she was specialised in Ancient Greece, so she mentioned a paper she was currently working on related to linguistics and etymology, and the topic they had talked about a few weeks ago.

When she started to get restless, she mentioned taking a break in a nearby coffee shop in front of the editing house. He agreed. As they walked, he was constantly looking over his shoulder to add onto her facts, interweaving their knowledge until it was a tightly knit tapestry between science and humanity.

“The term culture comes from Cicero,” she said as they sat down on a table by the window just as the raindrops started to hit the glass, making the outside duller and the inside saturated with warmth and hushed conversations. “He wrote of the cultivation of soul, cultura animi. Culture meant ‘place tilled’ in middle English, and in Latin, colere means ‘to inhabit, worship, till’ and cultus means care.

“There is another book that I think you might like, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It speaks of indigenous wisdom and science!” she said, in earnest excitement. “It’s a breather from Western scientific methodologies and how the English language seems to limit our comprehending of life. She speaks about how English is a noun based language while the one she studies—Potawatomi—uses phrases like ‘to be a Saturday’, or ‘to be a beach’. The language is so much more alive.”

Zandik was looking at her, letting his coffee get cold, tracing his thumb over the rim. The warmth lightly burned his knuckles, but that was the furthest thing from his mind.

“I… never considered it in such a way,” he murmured. “To me, Farsi as a native language was almost considered bothersome to translate, once. There are few words that can convey the meanings of the phrases I’ve heard in my childhood, and that was a source of frustration.”

He thought back to his homeland, which he had not thought about in a while, yet the memory remained warm and tender. Zandik hadn’t been there in a long while. He hardly remembered the flimsy town he grew up in, or the voice of his mother, or the face of his father. His memory was splintered into flashes, sounds, feelings that he had never bothered to touch, just in case the memory faded even more. Zandik remembered the wall that he always saw whenever he walked out of his front door. It was yellow on sunny days, orange during the rain, with a scaling vine that hiked up towards the top. He remembered that one of those days, a cat had sheltered there from the rain; he saw his mother coming back home with the sun hitting her hair and the cadence of her laugh. He also remembered that an old man had once given him his old shirt because Zandik had been playing in the shallows of a river and it had started raining again, and he had told him that he had similar cheekbones to his own son. His shoes had been brown.

She was looking at him softly.

“English is a narrow language,” he decided then, eager to hide the sheer vulnerability of this conversation. “I sometimes find it hard to express myself.”

“It must be hard, especially with how different they are,” she noted. “My native language is French, which is Latin based, but I haven’t found it too difficult to express myself.”

“Hm, I suppose so.”

“The differences aren’t bothersome, you know. They might be trouble when it comes to translation, but don’t see your native language as an obstacle, Zandik.”

“Not everyone thinks the same as you,” he answered mildly. “Some people do consider my heritage an obstacle.”

“Violence is done by the people, but acceptance is given through words. The English language has many violent and callous nouns to address people. A young, bratty boy can be seen as a delinquent; a man can be seen as an illegal, his existence can be a criminality.”

Zandik blinked, his expression twisting ever so slightly as he looked downwards.

“Each language is a world-view. Don’t let someone so shallow take yours away.”

When he returned home that day, the first thing he did was order a copy of that book she mentioned.

By the sixth meeting, he was the one to ask her how she ended up in an editorial after studying history (a friend, a recommendation, a chance); by the seventh, he dropped the madam and switched it for her name to dot his sentences; the eighth came with a storm that drenched her clothes and made him laugh as she dried off in the warm café of his faculty; the ninth was in his office, where she noticed two books on his desk that she had recommended; and by the tenth, she knew a few phrases in Farsi.

The numbers blurred between conversations and laughs, excuses and the lingering when they had to go but the words kept spilling. It is a curious thing, how meaningless time becomes when laughter fills your ears and when your only worry is understanding the person before you while not letting your drink get cold.

After six months, the warm lights of the café was switched out for an expensive dinner. She had been invited to the private party that one of Zandik’s friends held—a banker who called himself Pantalone—as a treat and a thanks for the book being officially done. She had a copy for herself, given to her by warm and nervous hands and a joke that even Darwin had to summarise his masterpiece before it was published.

The party was nice. The champagne was expensive, served in glistening flutes, and her vision was filled with black, tailored suits and well-fitting dresses. Zandik hadn’t dressed too differently from his normal attire (which was usually formal, even for a professor). He thought it was unnecessary to celebrate something like this when he published papers constantly, but she had laughed and told him he had not been a bestseller before.

“I am not a bestseller,” he noted. “My target audience isn’t the public.”

“Perhaps. But you can never know in whose hands your book might fall,” she answered, from experience.

They had been sitting side by side, a bit further away from the mingling guests. She had been introduced to Rosalyne, a woman who had immediately gotten along with her, and another named Anastasya who felt like a familiar face.

“That’s a name of Slavic and Greek origins,” she had mentioned to the woman with hair pale as snow. “It means ‘resurrection’.”

The other had only smiled.

But now she was with Zandik only. His shoulders were looser, probably from the champagne. He was looking at her and she was chuckling at one of his sarcastic quips when he looked outside and offered a hand.

“A breather?”

“Always.”

The night outside was cold enough to make her shiver. The music was stifled, now far away and dreamy, The beat suddenly reminded him of home, of the smell of the ground after rain and the shape of the glasses of the old librarian used to wear.

“How is your research going?” He asked lightly, leaning against the railing by her side.

“It’s almost done. I think this will be a good paper, I have read three books for it.”

“How many have you read to edit mine?”

“Hm, at least six. Lost count after a while, you know.”

Zandik smiled lightly. “Now you can call yourself a true expert in neuroscience. Don’t publish a paper on it, or else you might dethrone me.”

“I would never do such a thing!” She laughed, pressing her hand to her chest. “Someone needs to keep your superiority complex in check.”

“Ah, superiority complex, is it now? I would say it’s simply being prominent in my field.”

“Skill doesn’t warrant superiority.”

“No. It warrants credibility. In science, those two words are synonyms.”

“In history, it doesn’t work like that.”

“That would be because historians are not the most arrogant of the bunch.”

“Neuroscientists are?”

“I would bet on aerospace engineers."

“All scientists are arrogant,” she shot back, nudging him softly and making him tilt his head at her with a playful look on his face. “I can’t blame them. They’re hardly ever good at anything else.”

“Ah, no? How about I prove you wrong?”

“Sure.”

He outstretched a hand then. “Dance with me.”

She blinked in surprise, looking down at his hand and back at him, then giving him a smile that could probably knock the crown off an emperor. Zandik was the lucky one to receive it, pulling her further from the railing and letting his other hand settle at her side. Her other grabbed his shoulder.

“Such a cheap trick,” she noted, her voice low because the distance between them was short and intimate. “Dancing with me. Don’t scientists have other ways to prove they are good at other things?”

Zandik huffed. “What kind of other things?”

She only smirked.

Their steps were slow. She hadn’t danced in a long while, and the closeness made her feel warm. There weren’t any butterflies trapped in her stomach, or knots in her throat, because his presence brought her only silence. He twirled her once, and she nearly tripped over his shoe, and Zandik would remember how the moonlight reflected in her eyes for years to come.

By their next meeting, she had stopped counting. It wasn't just business anymore, and they didn't have the need to cover up the stolen moments with explanations and professional questions. Zandik had started inviting her to his conferences, and she had often invited him for lunch or dinner. Familiarity breeds intimacy—suddenly she was making sarcastic jokes that would suit his voice better and he was contemplating magazines on history out of genuine curiosity. She had started using the same hand motions as she spoke. He had started to learn french.

There were, however, times and days where the quiet meals over laughs and hidden smiles turned into a sharp pain in her joints. Her body was not often kind to her. Sometimes she would wake up with shaking hands, unable to walk further than her kitchen and back to the bed, where she would sit until she was ready to have the sun hit her skin again. This hadn't been much of an issue before, when they met on occasions, but it was starting to get increasingly more noticeable, like a background tune slowly rising to back up the main instrument.

One of those days, he had called her. The blinds were closed and the evening sun spilled gold upon the bedsheets. She remembered that sight, because she had been laying on her stomach with her knee pulled up and her hip twisted, and the specks of ichor swaying in the air had been in her field of vision.

"I have the next two days off," he implied after a short, stiff greeting. It took her a moment to register his words enough to form an answer. His voice, deep and rich, always seemed to lull her into a certain haze where the world around them faded into vague shapes and colours. He stayed silent for a moment, weighing her lazy hum, and sighing. "You sound… asleep. Are you even aware of our conversation?"

"Half," she mumbled, her cheek mushed into her pillow and her voice hoarse. She hadn't gotten water in hours and her throat ached for warm tea. "Why?"

"Hm, no reason. I assume you're not in a convenient state to meet me for dinner."

Somewhere, that word scratched against her thoughts. Dinner. A date, maybe. But his tone was so casual, like he was just proposing another lunch in the cafeteria before the faculty of sciences, that it only brushed up against her thoughts and faded away like mist.

"Mm… dinner. Sounds good."

"Perhaps, but you don't." She heard the thud of the car door and the background buzz quietening. "Are you sick?"

"Yes, but also not really."

"That's not quite an answer. You're either sick or you're not—it's a binomial distribution."

A what?

She opened her mouth and then closed it, her eyes squinting as she tried to make up a coherent answer. After a few seconds of silence, she blurted out something that made him stop for a few moments. "You can come explain that concept to me, if you want."

He went silent for a few seconds. "Do you?"

"Maybe."

This time, he didn't ask for a straight answer. He simply started the engine, questioned his choice two times, and drove to her place.

She managed to get up enough to open the door for him. A strand of blue was falling over crimson, his gaze immediately running over her like he was looking for an equation, or a solution to one. Stepping in, Zandik adjusted his square glasses (he had started wearing them more often around her lately after confessing he had avoided doing so during their meetings), took off his coat to hang it on the rack, and then walked towards her. She took a few steps back, gifting him a coy smile dulled by sickness, and his hands wrapped around her elbows to avoid letting her get away further.

"How long have you been sick for?" He asked sternly as he shifted his hand to her forehead, the warmth of it clashing against her skin. "Fever? Cold? Infection?"

"No, Zandik," she answered. "It's chronic. My joints and spine hurt." The woman lightly pressed her hand to her lower back, as if to stifle the pain. He had the sudden urge to follow it and try to take it away with his own.

"Have you eaten? Chronic pain doesn't mean you should ignore your nutrient intake. Your body still needs—" he eyed the way she was swaying lightly, her eyes trained on his and her lips pulled up, but still weak— "Never mind that. Go back and rest while I make something."

She stayed long enough, lingering by the doorway enough to watch him roll his sleeves up, neatly enough that you'd think they paid him for it. He started going through her shelves, muttering something in Farsi, before she finally retreated to the comfort of her pillows. The sound of someone filling her kitchen with a voice and a presence was comforting. An empty house was meant to be lived in. The silence served no one.

And like that, she drifted off. Between the sizzle of a pan and the rustle of her own sheets, the woman fell into another haze, right until someone shook her away by the shoulder.

She opened her eyes a bit, a sound escaping her lips. It seemed pained, he noted as a crease gathered between his brows. "I made you something to eat."

He murmured her name again and she pushed herself up on one elbow. The ache was unbearable. It wasn't the sort of pain that came from injury, but one that followed no matter what position you took. He had taken off his glasses—they were now hanging from the collar of his shirt—and she faintly noticed the taped bridge.

"You're in pain, are you not?"

"Yeah," she admitted, sitting up slightly and attempting to run a hand through her hair. Her fingers were stiff, curling slightly, before she exhaled tiredly. "Usually I convince one of my coworkers to come by and crack my spine."

"The one that gifts you the poor romance books?"

"Yes."

"You are aware that it's considered a pseudoscience," he noted, tilting his head slightly. He had sat down on the bed, so close she could almost lean against him. "It's placebo. It does not actually relieve—" He cut himself off, before exhaling and closing his eyes for a second. "…Lay back down."

She sunk back into the sheets within an instant. The woman rolled over on her stomach, feeling him lean over so close his hip was against hers. With another sigh that he made sure she heard, Zandik placed his palms on either side of her spine. They were warm and careful, against all odds, like he could name every bone beneath her skin but faltered at the brush of tepid skin.

"Breathe in," he said lowly, feeling her body move as she did. "Good. Now out."

As soon as he felt her body relax beneath his fingers (a feeling that made his stomach turn in a way he wouldn't acknowledge), Zandik pressed downwards at an angle, his shoulders tensing, until he heard a crack. She let out a sigh of relief while he restrained a shudder.

"You know, you could have mentioned it," he pointed out idly. His hands seemed to have a mind of their own, almost, kneading the muscle before he could stop himself. It got a soft inhale out of her, her stiff fingers curling into the pillow, but she didn't complain. "I have completed medical studies. Neuroscience is just a specialization."

"Mm," she answered, more drowsy the more his hands worked along her back. "Dancing, neuroscience, masseuse… truly an array of skill set you could put to use someday, Doctor."

He ignored the implication. When the twist of his torso and the force he was using became uncomfortable on his shoulders, he stood up enough to dig his knee by her hip, brushing the pads of his fingers against his side. "Can I?"

"Feel free," she replied instantly. Zandik swung his leg around her hip, his hand landing on her lower back so he wouldn't crush her spine as he lowered his weight on her. The food was going to get cold, his mind echoed vaguely. Then it answered to itself, I can reheat it anyway.

The heel of his palm met the back of her shoulder, kneading into coiled muscle. She tensed up, almost uncomfortable as he dug into a knot. "That's your trapezius. Do you ever take a break? It feels stiff."

"I do. It depends on the phases of the moon and the spring equinox."

A distracted huff of amusement left his lips. He felt her skin warming under his hands and, from the corner of his eye, heard her little sounds and how her fingers curled ever so slightly into the sheets. And suddenly, he was trying to recall everything he ever learned in textbooks, sliding his hand toward her arm.

"That's your deltoid," he noted, his frown deepening in concentration. Or in effort to concentrate. "And here is the Teres minor. Just beside is Teres major."

With each movement, she felt her mind become more blurry and indistinct. The only thing she felt was his hands and heard his voice as he explained anatomy to her, and she couldn't bring herself to form a witty answer like usual. The only thing she could begin to think was, he's so good with his hands.

"And this is the—" he moved lower, below her shoulder blade— "Latissimus dorsi."

Her body was starting to melt into the sheets. A soft sound escaped her, making him hesitate for a split second, before she hummed. "Thank you, professor."

"You better. The external oblique is here. And below it, the internal." His two fingers ghosted over her side. His hair was falling over his forehead as he worked her muscles, feeling her go more and more slack as time passed. She hadn't gotten that good of a massage in ages. Something in her tempted her to tell him it still hurt, just so he wouldn't leave her side too early, but that was a selfish thought. He was already doing enough anyway, indulging her in such a way.

After a moment of silence, he slowed his movements and leaned down. His voice lowered just slightly, and she could almost feel his breath against her ear.

"Are you falling asleep?" He murmured. "I made dinner."

She opened her eyes slightly, enough to gaze at him and give him a lazy, almost dizzy smile. "You should come over more often."

"Hm. You should invite me more, then."

When the pain lessened, the weather became wetter. She was reminded of the first time they met and how hard his eyes had been when he looked at her, and she decided to pay him a surprise visit. Her hands were a bit clammy from nerves—she had never visited him without prior information—and she was walking a little faster than usual. What if he does not enjoy it? What if Zandik had drawn a crystal clear line between work and her, or worse, between his life and her, and she wasn't allowed to cross?

The hallways of the faculty seemed to close in on her, cold, sharp, and judgemental. She knew where his office was from one of the times she came by to pick him up, at the end of the hallway with a black door and a cold label that read "Dr. Zandik". The white lights reminded her of some sort of examination room, where every one of her moves was put under a microscope and corrected with a red pen.

She took a deep breath and knocked. The tense silence made her want to turn back. Maybe he was out currently. He didn't have class at this time, but maybe he had gone to get a coffee, or maybe he was busy and she was merely obstructing his work. When her knuckles brushed against the knob in silent goodbye, it turned and the door opened.

Red met the colour trapped beneath her iris. His glasses were sliding down his nose, his face blank as he looked her over. Then he seemed to blink, tilting his head in recognition and opening the door wider.

"You surprised me."

She laced both hands behind her back with a soft smile. "Am I bothering? I can always step by another time."

"No, no—" he instantly replied, almost too fast, almost reaching for her, before containing himself. "Not at all. Come in."

She did. The door clicked shut behind her and she was met with an office that was incredibly him but not at all, at once. There were not many personal items. The shelves were lined with research and the surfaces were free from dust. The only sign this place was being used was his desk, which had papers strewn across it, a computer screen, and a fake cactus with a green too bright to pass as natural. He walked back, sitting down and motioning to the two seats reserved for brave students requesting tutoring.

It was almost like she could feel their pain within the material of the backrest. He hesitated, watching her, before suddenly reaching towards his desk drawer and opening it.

There was a moment, just one, suspended in time and held by the tips of their fingers, like a step that was about to be made. He glanced at her, his fingers curling, and she gave him another smile, lingering, before they both spoke, voices overlapping each other.

"I wish to give you something."

"I wanted your thoughts on something."

Another beat, before she laughed nervously. "You first."

Zandik exhaled and curled his fingers around the gift, standing up. He had the sudden urge to dust himself off, or even start talking about a recent experiment, if only to give himself something familiar to cling to. He hesitated again, cleared his throat, and extended it to her.

"I thought you might be interested," he said blankly, but his ears seemed reddened even from her spot. Upon his hand was merely a magazine, the newest edition of National Geographic History. The cover, of high quality and vivid colours, showed a Parthenon at sunset. "Considering, you probably know enough about this topic, so perhaps you won't find anything new or interesting. Still, I thought—well, you mentioned you're thinking of getting an annual subscription, and it would be smart to see what you're in for first, yes?"

…

"It's… not that great of a gift," he added after a moment, so awkwardly her heart suddenly hurt. He laid it on the surface of the desk between them ('You can have it if you wish') and she felt like she could hardly breathe while she looked at the cover ('If you're so eager to fulfil my wishes why don't you listen to one more?').

"Don't say that." Her voice was weak. "I've wanted to get one for a long time, why would you think this is a bad gift? Zandik, it's so thoughtful and—"

She cut herself off enough to look downwards, like she couldn't bear to look up and see his face. She might ask him for something else then.

"Thank you."

His lip twitched. "What was it that you wanted my opinion on?"

"Well, I uh—I saw on the news that they're launching a new space mission, Artemis II. Have you seen anything about it?"

Almost immediately, Zandik perked up. She could almost see the glint in his eye as he suddenly looked at her like he had been waiting for someone to ask that question all day.

"Yes, yes I have. I have been following the mission since they set the launch date to September 2025, in January of 2024. I think it's such an important event—I even sent my students some trustworthy articles on the topic—and the university even had the chance to help with a minor part of the mission," he started saying. She could see that gleam in his eyes again, the way his tone shifted into the one he used when he was talking to students, but his enthusiasm was almost juvenile. "Unfortunately I didn't have the qualifications, but I had the chance to speak with one of the engineers that work in NASA. Truly a fascinating topic. We see the moon everyday, and yet—"

He cut himself off, clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. "Apologies. I got carried away."

"Oh, no. I was enjoying the lecture, professor," she teased. "Though I imagine you could have had the qualifications, if you had chosen engineering instead of medicine. You certainly have the skills."

"It's just ambition." He waved a hand. "Skills and talent are useless if they aren't being taken advantage of."

"Fair argument. I'm quite enchanted by the name, Artemis. Sister of Apollo, goddess of the hunt and moon. Do you think they do that on purpose?"

"Of course. If you wish, I could…" he hesitated slightly, looking sideways before pressing his lips together into a thin line. "…explain it to you further. Whenever you're free."

She grinned, wide and excited. "I would love that. You still owe me an explanation on the binomial distribution."

His lips parted for a second before looking back at her, almost in surprise. Her fingers lingered along the newspaper, but her attention was clearly on him, waiting until he spat out whatever words were weighing on his chest. It took him a while, enough for her to wonder if he truly wanted to say them.

“Come with me,” he said then, red eyes turning unusually intense. “To watch the moon. Tomorrow.”

And, of course, she smiled. “I would love to.”

And so they did.

The park he drove them both to was empty at this time. The shadows of the trees darkened and spread out across damp grass like claws that brushed against their feet. The moon was bright, catching her skin and his eyes for brief, flickering moments in which he understood why people saw light as something heavenly. Her fingers brushed against his as she caught up to him, laughing about a sarcastic quip he had thrown over his shoulder, her shoulders loose and his lips pulling into an involuntary smile. He led her to a bench by a clearing between the high trunks, his hand gently guiding her to sit down and joining.

His leg brushed against hers. She leaned close enough for her shoulder to graze is own, and felt a spark of electricity under her skin when he didn’t pull away.

“Do you feel any pain?” He asked, tilting his head towards her and letting his hand brush against her knuckles. “The bench might be uncomfortable for you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is there any other place you’d like to make me sit?”

“You should stop with the innuendos. It’s immature.”

“You try to bite back a smile each time, so what does that really say about you?” The woman retorted, but her fingers sought his. He hesitated, before offering his palm and letting her press the pads of her fingers against his knuckles. “For someone so logical, you do unbearably romantic things.”

“Would you like me to be less so?”

A soft huff of amusement was stifled from her side. She looked back up at the sky, narrowing her eyes to rake them over the stars, and spoke up again.

“How do you say ‘moon’ in Farsi?”

“Mâh,” he answered. Her brows furrowed in concentration as she soundlessly followed the shape of his lips. It amused him as much as it made his chest twist. Zandik repeated it again, a little slower, and she repeated it. The pronunciation was not the best, but the way she spoke it had a shudder running down his spine, his fingers subconsciously tightening around hers.

“How is it written?”

He hummed. Then he gently brought her hand up, palm facing him, and with his index, slowly drew out the word in its original script, ‘ماه’. “Like that.”

“You’ll have to repeat that on a piece of paper,” she answered.

“Hm, at this point you might be able to speak fluently by the end of this year.”

“Only if you keep drawing out the words like that.” She teasingly tilted her head at him with a smile. “Then I might be able to focus.”

He leaned slightly closer. “Do you want more lessons?”

“Indulge me.”

Zandik then leaned closer. She stiffened when his warm breath just about brushed her ear, his voice lowering into a secretive whisper as his thumb drew a circle along the back of her hand. “Mehtabi keh sortat ra mi pushand in kar ra mi kand zira bah man hasadat mi kand.”

She blinked, turning to face him, but he pulled back before their noses brushed. The glint in his crimson eyes was almost playful, and the tilt of his head reminded her of a crow that was observing a human it particularly liked. He was smiling. “What does that mean?”

“You need to learn more, then you’ll know.”

“Ah, that’s not fair!” She argued. “I won’t ever remember how it’s written or spoken!”

“I’ll repeat it for you as many times as you wish.”

“Then t’es un salaud qui devrait arrêter de sourire si largement.”

Zandik couldn’t help a huff of amusement, his shoulders shaking with his chuckle. “Oh, are we using that tone with me, now? Perhaps you should try something a bit more nicer, hm?”

"Your wish is my command.” She leaned closer, enough to whisper something in his ear in the sweetest voice she could muster. He found it terribly amusing that she instinctively cupped the side of her mouth, like someone in the empty park would overhear them. “Si tu continue à me parler comme ça on va tout deux finir sans voix.”

He kept a small sound in his throat when she pulled back, clearing his throat. “I guess we both have more to learn, now.”

She laughed a little, looking sideways and then up at the moon. Their hands were still laced together.

“Have you seen the videos of the mission?” She asked. “One of the crew mates requested permission to name a crater after his wife.”

“I did.”

“It’s a very human thing to do, don’t you think? To look at the moon so closely and still think of someone you love so dearly.” Her thumb shifted over his palm, idly tracing the creases. He had the slender, soft hands of a scholar.

“If you had the chance to name something, how would you?”

That made her fall silent, her face becoming a more thoughtful one. She thought of many things. Memories of people she knew in her childhood brushed against her thoughts like the stream of a river lapping at sand. The woman could name many things she loved, and perhaps that was the difference between them, because he could name only a few. She thought of her grandfather, of lovely friends she made at university or work, and then she thought of him.

“I don’t really know,” she said after a moment, almost bashfully. “I can’t decide.”

“You should name it after some of the sugary teas you love to drink so much.”

“That is a low blow, professor Zandik. Don’t call me out on my quirks when you have your own.”

He laughed softly, and she found she had another thing to add to the list of things she adored.

“How would you name it? You’re closer to a world breaking discovery than me,” she said, her free hand idly travelling up to his elbow and down again. He seemed surprised for a second, his smile fading, before he looked at the moon again.

“Perhaps I would do something similar to one of the astronauts. Name something after my partner.”

“I wasn’t aware you had one.”

“I do not. Yet, at least. But if…” his voice grew slightly weaker, and she suddenly felt him lightly fidget with her fingers. “If I ever do, I’d imagine they’d mean a lot to me.”

He hoped she wouldn’t notice how red his ears probably were. His grip on her hand had tightened, and he wasn’t looking at her anymore, which made the stoic man look unbearably nervous. She wanted to pull him back to face her and watch the fluster in his eyes, but eventually settled on squeezing his hand back.

Before she could answer him, a twig snapped somewhere nearby. They both turned to look at who would be walking here in the middle of the night. She squinted her eyes, and it took him a while to recognise the person because of his poor vision, but he suddenly went completely stiff.

“That’s one of my students,” he deadpanned. Then he looked down at their hands, at her, and the troubled expression on his face made her cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing. Zandik saw it and narrowed his eyes at her, before clicking his tongue and pulling her up with him. “Come.”

As the two silhouettes drew closer, her and Zandik suddenly swerved to the side of the road, into the trees. She nearly tripped on a stray root, but he caught her and they both hid behind one of them. The fervent nature of the escape had her giggling hard from how much they resembled two teenagers sneaking out. He looked down at her and pressed her back against the trunk by the shoulders, leaning down to speak against her ear.

“If you keep being so loud, I might have to do something about that.”

She went to respond. He covered her mouth with his palm and smirked, hearing her laugh into it, her shoulders shaking softly.

“Just like that,” he praised softly. It made something in her twist.

The woman heard someone laughing, close to their hiding spot. Zandik ducked, nearly pressing himself up against her as they both stilled, trying not to get caught. How awkward it would be, to explain to two of his students why their professor was hiding with his ex-editor in the shadows.

After a moment of silence, she turned her head to check if they were safe. The moonlight caught her eyes again, filtering into her iris and swirling there like molten silver. He had the sudden urge to lean down and trap it against her eyelids and his lips. He tilted his head back and took her hand again, sneaking out of their hiding spot and dragging her to the parking lot where he had left his car.

“Stop laughing so much,” he chastised her gently as they got closer to a sleek, black one. He was still holding her hand, using it to pull her closer. As soon as she stumbled into his chest, she was pressed back against the side of the car, her hands wrapping around the lapels of his coat.

“Or what?”

“Or we might get caught. Would you like to be the one explaining the situation?” He murmured, curling his finger beneath her chin to pull it up to him. The flush on her cheeks made him smile in a way that was almost cheeky. Her eyes fell to his lips, her fingers curling to play with the ends of his hair. “You wouldn’t, would you? Because you’d like to be doing something else.”

A shudder wracked through her. He was almost speaking into her mouth, his warmth mingling with her own as she leaned back against his car. The urge to kiss him under the moon he so loved was nearly irresistible to her.

“What would I like to be doing?”

“You know what, aziztarin man.”

“I like it when you tell me what’s on your mind,” she baited, watching him get flustered. Instead of doing that, he leaned closer. His hooked nose brushed against her own, hesitantly, before she pressed her forehead into his. Tilting her head, she brushed his lips with her own, trying to coax him.

He was right on her breath. And yet he suddenly hesitated, red eyes flickering down to meet hers and admire the sight of her, lingering with lidded eyes. It was that split second that he lost, one he regretted, because they heard those students in the distance again.

Zandik groaned in frustration against her very mouth in a way that had her fingers curling into the fabric she managed to hold onto. She nearly wanted to pull him back and disregard the presence of those annoying students anyway, but he pulled away before she could, running a hand through his hair and nodding towards the car.

“Get in.”

He barely lost time when the engine purred to life, getting out of the parking lot. She was left sitting there, a terrible sense of yearning settling within her bones and making her grip the fabric of her clothes. At some point, Zandik side eyed her, and his lip twitched. For someone so composed, she was a little out of breath after that.

Usually, he’d drop her off at her place. Today, he turned right at the roundabout and her whole body coiled. She had been at his house on one occasion before, but that was before he nearly kissed her, and she suddenly felt like a teenager all over again, dizzy and feverish at the thought of having someone beneath her fingers.

He opened the door for her, gently taking her hand to help her up.

“How is your back?” He murmured as he lead her to the elevator. The way up was a blur filled with static the colour of her want, clenched fingers and lips pressed together and baited breath as they both waited for the last beep.

“It’s fine, for now.”

“Tsk,” he clicked his tongue, his hand brushing against her lower back to lead her to his door. “Again with that.”

He turned her around to face him. With a gentle nudge, she was back against his front door, pinned between it and him as he searched for the keys to it, his other hand placed by her hip to keep her still. The motion was almost casual, with him stepping a bit too close to open it, brushing his nose against her jaw before letting her in fully. She stumbled in, cheeks red, pulling her outer coat off and leaving her shoes by the wall.

As soon as the door was locked, he could finally finish what he had started.

His fingers lingered at the height of her elbow. Zandik hesitated, before fully wrapping his long fingers around her upper arm and pulling her close. Close enough to see the details in her eyes and the way the flush hiked up to her cheeks, but also the mischievous look on her face. The pads of her fingers found his knuckles, slowly walking up the fabric of his shirt and stopping at his shoulder.

“Doret begardam,” he muttered. “Would you like to know what that means?”

She leaned just a little closer, her hand curling underneath his collar, and smiled.

“Do enlighten me. You know how much I love linguistics.”

“It means ‘let me circle around you’, in Farsi.”

“Mhm, really?” Her knuckles brushed against his jaw now. “That’s fascinating.”

Zandik let his lip pull into a smile as his own hand grazed the side of her neck, fitting the crook of his thumb under her jaw. “And in Arabic, you can say ya’aburnee, which means, ‘you bury me’, because I cannot stand life without you.”

“In French, we say je t’ai dans la peau—‘I have you in my skin’.”

“Do you?”

She hummed, drawling out a lazy ‘yeah’. Her eyes, lidded, dropped to his mouth and back up again in a teasing manner. Both of them were testing the other, getting so close he could feel her breath on his mouth and his nose brushed against hers.

“You can also describe a person as fleure bleue instead of hopeless romantic, which means ‘blue flower’.”

“English can be such a shallow language sometimes.” His words were almost a whisper.

“Do you know what’s the universal language?” She whispered back, leaning in closer. “Something that even animals can understand.”

“Tell me.”

“Touch,” she revealed, like it was a secret. He hummed in amusement, almost speaking against her mouth and tilting his head in a way that made her want to give in.

Zandik huffed softly. “Are you implying something, perhaps?”

“Maybe. We should speak in a language the both of us can understand better, I think.”

“Let me start, then. As a professor who can teach you how to do it properly.”

He leaned further down, and his mouth met hers.

It was something tentative at first, careful, almost like a study he was performing in order to write a report on it later. Zandik tilted his head and she leaned forwards, her hands sinking into his hair and giving him a firm tug.

“I wasn’t aware you liked more strict lessons, historian,” he teased while she still had a handful of blue strands in her fingers. She smiled, before kissing him hard enough to sink her teeth into his bottom lip. His surprise allowed her to push him backwards, his hands landing on her waist, not to stop her, but to make sure she was following.

They hardly managed to make their way to his bedroom. Between the dizzying kisses, they started stumbling, fingers hooking on clothes but never quite pulling them off. He groaned when her nails scraped his nape, and she made a little sound when he returned the favour and deepened the kiss.

The woman made him sit on the edge of the bed. Zandik grabbed onto her shirt. Tugged her down to his lap until there was no space left between them and kissed her back, hungrily. He seemed starved, pulling her downwards and deepening the kiss while she wrinkled the material of his shirt in her other hand, pulling him up, matching his fervour. He grabbed on the back of her neck and she shifted her hand to his tie, pulling away only because she needed to breathe. He didn’t think the same, because he was kissing her again after seconds, panting softly against her as she tried to keep up, her nails raking along his scalp.

For a man so cold, he kissed her like he’d die without it.

He murmured her name. She kissed him harder, pulling a bit on his collar and smiling when he let out a soft sound, almost like a groan and a whine. His fingers had curled into her shirt, one hand travelling down her back to settle both on her lower spine, then wrapping around her upper thigh. She tilted her head down, breaking the kiss and catching her breath against his jaw.

“You speak more fluently than me, it seems,” he rasped softly, his eyes still hazy and unfocused.

“Does that mean you’ll sit obediently and let me take the lead?” She grinned, and the playful glint in his eye returned.

“A true scientist never misses the chance to research.” His hand slid under the hem finally, smoothing down the skin there as he caught his breath. She shuddered, slowly starting to undo the knot to let the tie fall to the floor by his feet. She wanted to kiss him again, but he grabbed her jaw and flipped them around.

Her back hit the surface of something again. She was starting to think he really wanted to pin her, because he pushed her back down when she tried to sit up. His hand went to the fall of her hair, tugging her head back to plant kisses along the side of her neck. His fangs brushed against the tender skin and she groaned, tilting her head into his palm.

“For someone so confident,” he breathed teasingly before guiding her to wrap her legs around his waist, “you’re so touch starved.”

His hips met hers, using his weight to press her down, making her shudder at the slightest hint of friction. She stifled a sound, so he bit down on the crook of her neck to feel her jerk against him.

“Stop clenching your jaw,” he instructed. “And breathe deeper.”

She did, suddenly remembering she still needed oxygen in her lungs. His hands were slowly starting to map out every inch of her, lifting the fabric of her shirt and leaving a feathery touch up her side to watch goosebumps rise on her skin. She grabbed his hair and pulled him down to her again, feeling him whimper against her tongue.

“Tell me you want this,” Zandik said against her lips.

She swallowed, throat bobbing when his fingers just brushed against it. “Please.”

“Clearly.”

Gods above.

“I want you, Zandik.”

“Good girl,” he answered. She exhaled, a bit shakily, as he leaned up to give himself room for movement. His hands found the buttons of her shirt, undoing it at the same time he kissed the skin revealed beneath. The shirt fell away, her hands falling to his shoulder and hair. He was touching her all over—finding the dip of her waist, the underside of her chest and her arm. His weight settled along her lower body, finding every tender spot that had her shuddering and gripping at him just a bit tighter. His thumb pressed into her lower back, making her arch, his other hand wrapping around her hip to adjust her beneath him. “You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you?”

The woman couldn’t help the way her face twisted, a soft little whine falling from her lips, and he had the courage to laugh against the soft skin of her belly. “A pretty thing that likes to be praised.”

Her hands knotted in his hair harder. “Perhaps.”

He hummed, kissing his way back up and using her hips to flip her on her stomach. The heel of his palm ran up her spine with enough pressure to knead into her form and make her curl her fingers. Zandik placed his mouth along her back, shifting his hands back to the sides of her waist and massaging the spot, digging his fingers into two small dimples at either side of her vertebrae. She instinctively reacted, her breath coming in shorter as her thoughts went muddy.

“Your spine, your waist, the curve of your jaw…” he murmured as he worshipped all those places. Almost like he was muttering to himself. “I should rewrite Euler’s identity, as I’ve found something far more beautiful.”

It almost made her laugh, if it wasn’t for the fact he wasn’t even allowing her to think. The man kissed her under her ear, his palm briefly ghosting her throat and making her tilt her head backwards. She was panting, her gaze unfocused and her hips lightly bucking against the sheets. “Already so worked up, hm?”

“Mm.”

“Tsk tsk, can’t even speak properly,” he spoke into her ear. “Why don’t you turn back around so I can pray to you properly?”

She was going to die by the end of today, she was sure of it. Still, she pushed herself up on one elbow and managed to turn around, his lips meeting hers again. Her hands found his hair, his own her hips, slowly dragging her towards the edge of her bed. She tried to reach for him, pull him back and return the favour of a gentle touch upon his skin, but he lightly swatted at her wrists. He had probably never hesitated less as he found the waistband of her trousers.

“Lift your hips for me,” he said, and she did, letting the cold air brush against her legs now. “You listen so well.”

“Zandik,” she nearly mewled out. “You’re teasing.”

“Use your words to tell me what to do, then,” he challenged.

She reached for his hair and tugged. It made him whine against the spot above the waistband of her underwear, feeling him lose his breath a little at the manhandling. So she curled her fingers in tighter, using her other hand to guide his own to where she wanted it.

“So, so good for me,” he groaned out as he looped the waistband of the fabric around his fingers, dragging it down. “Keep being good.”

His warm breath brushed against her. She inhaled, trembling slightly, her fingers curling in expectation. There was hardly anything else she could focus on when his hands slid to her thighs, squeezing and prodding before leaning down and finally giving her what she wanted. His mouth was precise, firm, moving with barely restrained hunger. She gasped, and the sound immediately turned into a whimper. It seemed that the man knew how to bruise his knees when it truly mattered, because as soon as she reacted, he was nudging her leg over one of his shoulders. He was starved, making her shudder and grab at his hair to yank him closer.

He rewarded that motion with a groan that raked up her spine, her back arching. “Zandik, the neighbours—”

The man pulled away enough to bite at the inside of her thigh, the sharp sensation making her moan. “You have better things to worry about. Stop tensing up when you have someone’s head between your legs.”

He slowed down significantly, which made her want to jump out of her skin. Her breath started coming out in quick pants. She felt her hips jerking slightly against him, but he didn’t seem to mind at all, because the soft groans and appreciative hums coming from him only got more frequent. He was being so good for her, his hands kneading her hips and thighs while he ate her up like she was the last meal he’d ever get. Something coiled in the cradle or her hips, inevitably, growing even as he kept a steady pace.

“Breathe,” he managed to tell her. His hand came down to her front, grinding the heel of his palm and making her tilt her head back. The woman was tasting the relief on her tongue, her eyes shutting and her face contorting into bliss. She vaguely thought about how loud she was being, how his name kept spilling from her lips in desperation, about a possible issue with neighbours and noise complaints, but he made sure to get that out of her head as soon as she even tried to get her thoughts together.

Then his name started becoming more slurred, the words sharpened into an accent from her homeland and pronounced incorrectly. With a few more desperate tugs at his hair, he tipped her over the edge, feeling her writhe under his hands in a way that made him dizzy.

Instantly, he began kissing the inside of her thigh, uncaring about the mess. He ran his tongue over his lips and leaned up again, his mouth meeting hers like he hadn’t had enough. He didn’t act like it, pressing her back down into the sheets and feeling her whimper under him when he moved to her neck, pushing the shirt fully off her arms and tossing it somewhere aside.

“Khodaye bozorg, nazdiktrin chiz bah kamal ra faghat zamani mitvan hes kard keh labacpehei man roye poost to bashod,” he breathed, panting, his hips never daring to meet hers until she wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him closer. Zandik whimpered against her skin, his elbows settling at either side of her head as she caught her breath. “You’re perfect. You’re…”

He couldn’t even finish, the words dying between their lips. She used her position to slowly turn them over, his back meeting the pillows as she straddled him, whimpering at how sensitive she still was. Instead she focused on returning the motions, leaving marks across his neck and unbuttoning his shirt to run her hands down his sides. He was surprisingly sensitive, stiffing a hiss and arching, his hands cupping her jaw to bring her face back to his.

“I can’t get enough of you,” he said, voice shaky and barely above a whisper. It felt like a secret that was sealed between them, one of many. Her fingers barely brushed against his stomach, but the skin still jumped beneath her, his inhale fracturing as he grabbed onto her hips. She slid her palm downwards, right above his waistband, and it was nearly enough for him. He was wrecked just from what they had done. He took another breath, trying to be stern. “You’re testing my resolve, nafasam. Terribly.”

“What sort of professor are you, if you don’t know patience?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. She tilted her head, giving him a lazy but sly smile. The woman pressed her hips down and he let out another groan, his head tilting backwards as his fingers tightened along the shape of her.

“Not with you.”

“Even if I ask?” She crooned. “Not even then?”

“Only if you ask,” he told her instead.

“Then be patient.” Her mouth met his collarbone, his hand finding her hair. His touch was gentle and his gaze turned devastating. She was aware she might have done anything he asked just then, but he didn’t. “Will you?”

“For you,” Zandik whispered, his breathing getting more unsteady the more she touched him. She found the shape of his arms and felt him swallow beneath her mouth. She experienced his fingers twitch, the gasps and hums and slurred praises he gave away without a second thought. It was only when she started travelling lower that he stopped her, shaking his head. “Nafasam, please.”

“Please what?”

“Let me worship you the way you deserve.” He coaxed her back up, before turning her around. Again. It seemed that she wasn’t going to get out from under him for long tonight. "You’ll be good for me, won’t you? You’ve been so good this entire time. Can you take a bit more?”

She nearly whimpered. “Yes.”

His hand found hers, pinning her above her head and lacing their fingers. The way her held it was gentle, but his mouth clashed against hers in a way that was nearly oppressing. It was heated and dizzying, with him sinking his fingers into the plush of her lips and making sure she felt nearly out of breath. Only when she pulled back to gasp for breath did he move, finding his belt and undoing it with one hand. She tried to help him with the other, but he quickly collected both of her wrists in his palm.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he instructed. She did so, and he immediately responded with praise, his hand running up and down her leg. His expression was somewhere between flustered and blank, like a fraying rope. “You listen so well. Breathe deeply, aziztarin man.”

The garments were pushed down his hips. She almost looked downwards, but he tipped her chin up again and pressed himself close, enough that she could only look at him. The woman inhaled, nodding softly before he guided himself in. He was slow, methodical—almost unbearably so—his fingers curling a bit tighter into her wrists and his voice coming out in a soft, reverent curse. She tensed up, a sound falling from her mouth that he caught, kissing her deeply.

His hips met hers, and she shuddered harshly. His breath stuttered, his other hand falling to her hips to keep her still as her head fell backwards again, trying to catch her breath properly. She felt like she couldn’t.

“Breathe,” he repeated softly, his rich voice reverberating against the spot beneath her ear that he had started to love. Shifting his hand from her hip to her lower back, he adjusted her position. “Relax, nafasam. You’ll hurt your back again.”

The first movement was slow, almost gentle, the second was deep enough to make her spine curve. She choked on a sound, her fingers curling into his knuckles as he leaned down to kiss along her shoulder. Helpless sounds started to leave her, her knees pressing into his sides. She wanted to hold on to him, but she couldn’t, laying there and trembling beneath him.

She drew her legs around his hips to press him closer. He choked on a sound, his head falling into the crook of her neck as he moaned deeply, his hand holding her side before sliding to her thigh to hike her legs up higher. Zandik changed his pace ever so slightly, his breath hitching as he tried to hold back his own sounds.

“Don’t,” she begged weakly. “Don’t do that. I want to hear you enjoy yourself, too.”

He might’ve whimpered. His mouth met her jaw, the sounds now hitting her ear while she shook. He wasn’t letting her move. “Good girl. Take it easy.”

The way her sounds got a bit louder after he praised her was surely coincidence.

"I knew you had it in you,” he coaxed in a breathy voice. “You’re doing so well.”

She was close terrifyingly fast again. Finally managing to slip one of her hands out from beneath his grip, the woman left marks up his back, helplessly writhing as his sounds kept getting more desperate. She couldn’t think of anything but him, which was exactly what he desired, so he moved his hand between them until she jerked, her hand digging into his shoulder tightly.

They were both starting to unravel in each other’s mouths. He didn’t stop kissing her, not even when they could hardly breathe and when she felt like she was going to end up with tears down her cheeks. He had a lovely accent when he was almost there, slurring in Farsi against her skin and whispering things that sounded like a prayer. And when she finally tensed, they both broke, movements stuttering and breaths hitching until the sheets were nothing but a mess. His pupils were dilated, her skin hot and everything was a mess.

He pulled away with a tiny whine he bit into his lip. She managed to shift to her side, catching her breath as her head rolled into his pillow. Zandik was standing up again, adjusting his trousers and running a hand down his face to wipe the pathetic expression off his features.

He didn’t let her drift off, because he was scooping her cheek up to make her look upwards, his eyes sterner than before.

“I’ll bring you something sweet,” he said to her. He tried to sound composed, but strings of the earlier desperation were still woven into his voice. “Glucose is the fastest way to break down and get some energy. These activities require nutrient intake, nafasam.”

As soon as the word ‘glucose’ was out of his mouth, she was groaning softly.

Zandik left her side for just a few moments, enough time to go to the kitchen and grab water and the glucose he spoke of. The woman was still almost drifting off to sleep, laying on her side with a dazed look when he sat by her, wrapping his fingers around her elbow and making her sit.

The glass of water was pushed into her hands. She downed it immediately before eating the chocolate he pressed into her hand, humming softly when it melted on her tongue. He raised an amused eyebrow.

“Sore?”

"Don’t get too full of yourself,” she answered hoarsely. Zandik hummed again, unconvinced, before standing up again and grabbing a towel from the bathroom. He helped her clean up, his hands steady as her own form shook slightly.

“Does your back hurt?” He asked at the same time he pressed his palm against her spine. It did, in truth. The ache had settled along her hips and her back, making it uncomfortable, but she tried to ignore it and focus on the situation.

“Perhaps a little.”

“A little? You should’ve said something, it might have been less enjoyable for you—”

She put her hand over his mouth to silence him. “Think less.”

His face became disgruntled. Still, he dragged her closer, his hands kneading into her waist like it was second nature by now. When her head fell on his shoulder, Zandik decided to lean back against the pillows, letting her rest on him as he absently ran the pads of his fingers over her skin again, like he couldn’t get enough yet. He followed the curve of her spine, then her hip and waist, before he found her jaw and ran his thumb over it a few times.

“Are you sizing me up for your next experiment?” She mused, half asleep already. He blinked, staying silent for a second before his lips pressed together to fight back an amused smile.

“For my next study, that is.”

“You just did that, Zandik.”

“Experiments are to be repeated in order to verify their credibility. Darwin didn’t write the Origin of Species in one night,” he answered smugly, leaning down slightly to almost press his mouth against hers and watch her lips part in expectation. Then he tilted his head to press his mouth beneath her ear. “He needed to write six volumes to explain his research, but I might have to write more by tomorrow.”