Of course it had to be today.

He doesn’t knock unless he has something to say. And unfortunately, today, he does.

The hallway smells like overwatered plants and floor wax.

Anaxagoras stands in front of your door like a man about to file a complaint with upper management, posture stiff with that special brand of academic self-loathing reserved for people who know they’re about to do something humiliating.

He rehearses the knock. Once. Twice. Third time’s not the charm—just tolerable. Four. Five. Fine. He taps the door like it personally offended him and immediately regrets it.

The door creaks open. Of course it does. He warned the landlord about the hinges in winter.

He doesn’t step in.

Doesn’t need to. He knows the layout. Knows where the light always burns out first and where your books pile up like geological strata of poor judgment and worse taste. Knows how many times you tried (and failed) to brew tea in that ridiculous porcelain pot you claimed “brought out the bergamot.”

His hand lifts. The book appears between you like a ceasefire flag, if ceasefires were 600-page dissertations on metaphysical dualism, now annotated within an inch of their existence.

Page corners folded with surgical spite. Margin notes: tiny, tight, utterly condescending. A masterclass in passive aggression. He did it on purpose. You’d know that.

You argued with him. Loudly. Incorrectly. Six times, to be precise. Quoting that treatise in the middle of his study while he was—god help him—trying to get through a particularly dense passage about dialectical structure. You disrupted him.

So he told you to leave.

Well. Told is generous. He weaponized language like a scalpel—one cutting remark, efficient and cold, designed to slice clean through your noise. It worked. You left.

And then—

Silence.

Perfect. Immaculate. Horrible.

Anaxagoras likes silence the way some men like whiskey: neat, expensive, and entirely within their control. But this silence? This was different. This was silence that echoed. That sat in the chair where you used to throw your coat. That lingered in the unfinished comment you’d scribbled in his notes two days prior—the one his hand hovered over longer than necessary.

He told himself it was fine. Optimal. Efficient.

But the room felt… hollow. Like an equation missing a variable. Like a thought that refused to finish itself.

Now here he is.

And the worst part? He can’t even pretend this is your fault anymore. You’re the one who left, yes. But he’s the one standing here now, looking like an idiot with a book in his hand and regret clawing at the inside of his ribs.

He shifts his grip. Not a fidget. He doesn’t fidget. He recalibrates. There’s a difference.

His thumb presses too hard against the spine. The weight of the book is nothing. The weight of this moment? Inconvenient.

“You’re still wrong about page thirty-seven,” he says.

Voice steady. Neutral. The academic equivalent of throwing a napkin over an emotional crime scene. It’s a line rehearsed to hell and back, clipped and clean, no inflection. No feeling.

But his heart’s beating faster than it should. He hates that.

He could leave now. Should. But he doesn’t.

Because—and this is stupid—he remembers what it was like to read that damn book with you. To argue until the light dimmed and your voice cracked and everything slowed down into something not unlike… peace.

He clears his throat. That’s as close to vulnerability as he’ll allow.

“But,” he says, carefully, like the word might explode if he says it wrong, “your presence… was not entirely without merit.”

There. It’s out.

He wants to die.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. The silence returns—but this time, it waits. It listens.

And if you laugh—if you smirk—he swears on every philosopher in that damn book, he’s walking straight into traffic.