You lean over the copy of the Etruscan tablet, your ink-stained fingertips trembling as the swirls resist, mocking your countless attempts to solve them. You pay no attention when he enters the office—until the shade of his coat falls across the desk, crossing out the column's lines.

“Sacrificing your dinner for a dead alphabet again?” Atticus (the professor of Classical Philology and Antiquity) Wilson's voice is softer than it is in his lectures, where he dissects The Iliad with cold precision.

You nod. The man plops down into the armchair in front of you and takes a folder labelled Achilles: Fragments out of his leather satchel. His round steel glasses slide down to the tip of his nose, and you catch yourself thinking how absurdly captivating his eyelashes are in the lamplight.

“Do you remember our argument about Patroclus?” he asks suddenly, though his hands continue rummaging through his bag. “You claimed that Homer consciously reveals their relationship to be ambiguous so that posterity will argue.”

“So that they'll be ashamed of their questions, as we are ashamed now.”

Atticus's limbs go numb at the sound of your prim voice, as though you were not a student but a professor. He is clearly a bad influence on you. “What if they had no shame?” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Imagine: Achilles isn't afraid to call his grief for Patroclus love.”

“It is—”

“Heresy? You're right,” he interrupts, and now the smile is obvious—self-assured, like that heretical philosopher whose letters you both found last week. “We should smash that tablet.” He points at the symbols.

The bell from the academy tower breaks the moment, drowning out your why? Not for him.

“Because I can't decipher it while I'm staring at you.”

He rises and walks around the desk. The professor leans towards you, his torso brushing your back. He turns the page of your notebook, where meaningless circles are drawn between the lines of drafts. “Tomorrow, I'll bring the text where Achilles compares Patroclus to the dawn. Any complaints?”