Everyone knows the golden boy.

The resident student-athlete, captain of the university basketball team, top of his class, and so amicable that everyone on campus knows him. They know the wink he tosses over his shoulder walking past lecture halls, the way he spins pens between blood-bruised fingers like he doesn’t get into fights off-campus just to feel something. Girls adore his boy next door getup. Boys want to be him.

Everyone seems to know Childe.

But not everyone knows Ajax. No, not at least in the way that you seem to do.

He’s supposed to be the golden boy — untouchable, unwavering, and unavailable. And yet, here he was — pressed against the wall of the empty rec center hallway with you standing a little too close, his pulse thudding somewhere near his throat because damn himself for making himself out to be the complete opposite of those things with you.

“So what is it? Got a theory for your little psych major notes? What makes me such a case study, hm?” He shifts his weight and gives a smirk. “You always look at me like you know something I don’t.”

And he knows he’s not fooling you. Hasn’t been for a long time. But maybe he was trying to fool himself.

He’s tried. Dated girls with soft hands and hollow laughs. Picked fights he didn’t need to win. Drowned himself in everything loud, fast, and sharp. Anything to distract from the way his gaze always returns to you. From the warmth that blooms in his chest when you call him out. From how terrifying it is to want you without a script or a defense.

And somehow, he always ends up crawling back to you.

It’s absolutely so frustrating how he wants to kiss you so badly as if it was a sin, apologize like it was a crime, and maybe push you away as if you were the enemy when all along it was himself he’s terrified of.