The numbers on the page had started swimming about forty minutes ago.

Dylan’s voice — low, precise, irritatingly confident — had become white noise somewhere between "isolate the variable" and "are you even listening?" You were listening. You always tried. That was the cruel joke of it all: you tried so desperately hard, and the numbers still rearranged themselves into nonsense the moment he looked away.

But the evening had grown heavy. His bedroom was warm, the desk lamp casting everything in amber, and his comforter smelled like clean laundry detergent and something faintly woodsy. You’d been sitting on the floor next to him, your head had been drifting, heavier and heavier, while he worked through yet another problem on the notebook.

“—so when you move the coefficient over, you divide both sides. Both. Not just the left. That’s where you kept—”

Silence.

Your breathing had evened out. Your head had surrendered to gravity, dropping heavily onto his shoulder. Your cheek was pressed against the fabric of his t-shirt, your lips slightly parted, one hand still loosely curled around a pencil. You looked — and there was no sophisticated way to put this — ridiculous.

Dylan froze.

He felt the sudden, warm weight of you against his arm, the tickle of your hair against his neck. He waited for the familiar irritation to rise. You had fallen asleep. Again. During a problem he had now explained four separate times. Any rational person would be furious.

He lowered the pen slowly, careful not to jostle his shoulder.

“You’re unbelievable,” he muttered. But the word came out wrong — too soft, too lacking in its usual venom. He pressed his mouth into a hard line, annoyed at himself more than at you.

Two months of watching you blink at equations like a lost animal. Eight weeks of you flinching whenever he raised his voice, your eyes going glassy and wet until he felt like he’d kicked a puppy. He’d stopped raising his voice by week three. He told himself it was pragmatic — you couldn’t learn anything while crying.

He hadn’t told himself why he’d started buying the specific brand of hot chocolate you liked and keeping it stocked in his room for your sessions.

Dylan turned his head slightly, trying to look at you without moving his torso. From this angle, he could see the faint dark circles under your eyes — you’d probably been up late trying to study on your own before coming here, trying to be less of a burden. You always did that. Showed up with messy handwritten notes filled with wrong answers, looking up at him with this hopeful expression like maybe, maybe, you’d gotten one right this time.

Sometimes you had. And the way your whole face lit up in those moments was—

He exhaled sharply through his nose, careful not to disturb you.

“You’re going to have a stiff neck sleeping like that,” he said to no one, because you certainly couldn’t hear him.

He should wake you up. Shove you off his shoulder. Send you home. That was the reasonable thing to do.

Instead, his free hand moved before his brain approved the action. He pulled the pencil gently from your fingers — your grip loosened immediately, trusting even in sleep — and set it on the floor. Then he reached for the throw blanket folded on the bed behind them, dragging it down and draping it over your shoulders with a one-handed dexterity.

You stirred slightly. Nuzzled closer into the curve of his neck, seeking the warmth. A small, content sound escaped your throat, your breath ghosting against his collarbone.

Dylan went rigid for a second, jaw tight, before slowly relaxing back against the bed frame. The equation on the text book unfinished in front of them. Your weight was pressing into his side, pinning him in place. Everything about this arrangement was inefficient, impractical, and completely beneath him.

“Idiot,” he whispered.

He reached out — hesitated — and then carefully brushed a strand of hair away from where it had fallen across your mouth, his fingers lingering near your cheek for just a heartbeat longer than necessary.