Alistair often found his thoughts drifting, untethered, to the fleeting moments after lectures concluded at Atherton College. Lately, a singular curiosity had taken root, a tendril of unease coiling around his chest: how did Elias Thorne and young Silas Croft truly depart for their respective homes?
Jealousy, plain and simple, fueled this quiet obsession. It gnawed at him, a dull ache beneath his carefully composed exterior. From what little he’d ever glimpsed, Silas had always trailed a few paces behind Elias, a shadow rather than a companion. They rarely walked side by side.
Yet, the image persisted. Silas, a young man on the cusp of his own formidable presence, following Elias with an unspoken devotion Alistair found both repelling and utterly captivating. As he entertained this peculiar fixation, a chill ran through him. It felt like tampering with something forbidden, like a scholar daring to pry open an ancient, cursed box.
A tiny casket, not just brimming with despair, but with a cruel, exquisite hope that promised ruin. One knew the danger, felt the wrongness, yet the allure proved irresistible. A soft sigh escaped Alistair’s lips.
“My mind wanders too freely.”
Indeed, his usual academic precision had abandoned him. Still, the next afternoon, as the bell tolled for dismissal, he found himself following Silas. Cautiously, he kept to the shadowed arcades and narrow lanes, ensuring Elias would not notice him.
He didn't need to go far.
Silas halted near a grimy corner where the gas lamps struggled against the encroaching fog, his gaze fixed on Elias's retreating back. Peeling paint on a crumbling brick wall, the rust-eaten filigree of a forgotten gate, dust motes dancing in the weak light filtering through a sagging archway—a tableau of neglect surrounded them. Elias, a broad, confident figure, strode ahead. Silas, a picture of quiet longing, followed. And Alistair, a silent witness, watched from the periphery.
The entire scene felt wretched, embarrassingly pathetic. He pivoted sharply, retreating.
Later, in his dimly lit study, the embers of the hearth glowing faintly, Alistair felt a peculiar satisfaction. His decision to turn back had been prudent. Curiosity, yes, had bitten him, but what horrors might he have unearthed had he pressed on? Ignorance offered a fragile shield. He was no fool to open Pandora’s box for a mere whim.
Word reached him, through the hushed whispers of the college halls, that Elias's peculiar fixation on Silas had intensified. Silas, for his part, still seemed to carry a palpable apprehension, perhaps even outright disdain, for Elias’s attentions.
Disdain, yes. It had to be. How could Silas feel anything but resentment towards a fellow student who, upon his transfer, had made his life a misery? A thin, self-serving smile touched Alistair's lips. A small victory, perhaps, that he had never intervened in Elias’s early bullying. Sometimes, inaction was a peculiar form of wisdom.
He laced his fingers behind his head, staring at the elaborate plasterwork of his ceiling. The intricate patterns, the elegant curves, reminded him of his fortunate birth. Wealth and comfort had always been his, an only child, rarely denied a desire.
“Damn it all.”
Until Elias Thorne, he had believed himself invincible, capable of anything. That brute had revealed the bitter truth: life often laughed in the face of one’s carefully laid plans. Alistair suspected Elias was learning that same cruel lesson.
Merciless, the world could be. Utterly so.
At least Alistair had cultivated restraint, a talent for concealing the tumult of his heart. Elias, however, was a creature of raw emotion, blind to the intensity, the almost abnormal hunger, in his own gaze when he looked at Silas. That sudden, untamed sentiment must have rattled Elias profoundly.
Alistair knew the sensation intimately. He had endured it. Elias had not. Instead of attempting to court Silas's favour, Elias had only managed to cultivate his resentment. For Alistair, watching from a discreet distance, this unfortunate turn of events suited him perfectly.
“Remain clueless, please,” he murmured into the quiet room.
Better still, for Silas to grow weary, to escape Elias’s orbit entirely. Alistair harboured no fanciful hopes of Elias turning to him. This kind of raw, possessive devotion terrified him.
One wish consumed him: to reach a day when he no longer loved Elias, and for Elias to find love somewhere, anywhere, else. Such a simple desire. Yet, the world, as he had learned, rarely granted simplicity.
Another unsettling shift followed. Elias, who had previously occupied a desk near the back, relocated. He chose the seat directly in front of the tutor's rostrum, a terrible position for a man of his imposing height. He completely obstructed the blackboard.
Silas's previous seatmate, a nervous young scholar named Mr. Davies, awkwardly greeted Alistair and Julian Ashworth, his face a contorted mask of embarrassment and discomfort. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
Julian and Alistair exchanged a glance, offering curt nods. Mr. Davies offered a strained chuckle, lingering in the air between them, but neither replied. They held no interest in such trivialities.
Elias settled beside Silas without a word, maintaining a stony silence throughout the lecture. Alistair, in turn, prayed—no, desperately wished—they might remain suspended in this suffocating tension, frozen for another year and a half. Perhaps then, this agonizing present would recede into a vague, forgotten dream.
Change, however, refused to be stifled. Elias, whose weekends had been a notorious parade of debauchery, seemed to rein in his ‘hobby.’ So it appeared, at least. Gossip gleaned from Julian's circle suggested he hadn’t ceased entirely, but the boasts of his conquests no longer echoed through the college halls. The lingering scent of cheap perfume and stale spirits no longer clung to his person. For Alistair, it offered a small mercy. He no longer had to endure the stench of Elias's escapades up close.
“Thorne, old chap, no more carousing for you?” Barnaby Shaw, a plump, boisterous sort, swayed his hips suggestively before Elias, thrusting his hands near his crotch with a lewd wink. Elias’s face twisted.
He shot a quick, furtive glance towards Silas, then snarled, “Confound it, Barnaby! I told you not to speak of that in public!”
“Why the sudden shyness, eh?” Barnaby pressed.
“Mention it again, Shaw, and you’ll regret it,” Elias warned.
“Oh, come now, Thorne—”
“I said silence!”
“…Very well, then.”
Barnaby’s companions exchanged disappointed looks. Elias, with his imposing stature and mature air, had once been the perfect conduit for the prurient curiosity of young gentlemen brimming with unchecked urges. Most of the men in Elias’s set had already fumbled through clumsy experiences. Compared to clueless virgins, they were easily stirred, and with Elias no longer sharing his exploits, their attention naturally drifted to Julian.
Julian, however, merely bared his teeth in an expression of pure disgust. “You filthy perverts.”
“Ah, there he goes! Julian and his pious pronouncements!”
“A mad fanatic, he is. What a wretched waste of potential.”
Laughter rippled through the room, loud and fleeting.
Most of their social circle had ventured into forbidden territories at least once, yet for some inexplicable reason, Julian Ashworth had not. They teased him good-naturedly, calling him a virgin, but no one dared disrespect him. He was Julian Ashworth, after all. At the same time, Julian carried a lighthearted, almost careless air about everything, making his actions seem casual and his sharp words easy to dismiss. Some found him charming; others found him approachable, often remarking that his pleasant demeanor belied his intimidating features.
“Cease that glaring, you brute. You’ll make me soil myself.” Barnaby snickered.
“Indeed, a frightfully stern countenance.”
“Do you imbeciles crave a beating?” Julian glowered, and the group erupted in further laughter, though the joke held little wit. A few hangers-on at the back of the classroom, perhaps friends, perhaps less, joined in with their forced guffaws, adding to the clamor. Amidst them, Alistair sat, his gaze vacant, lost in thought, fixed on the discreet bulge beneath his trousers.
He recalled, with surprising clarity, never once having experienced genuine arousal for a woman. It seemed, then, that he was born to this particular proclivity. He had felt the stirrings of desire watching illicit illustrations featuring both sexes, but never, not once, had he fantasized about a woman’s form during his solitary moments. The former, he mused, felt more about the intensity of the situation; the latter, a simple, profound lack of interest.
He had been to a club once, dragged along by Elias Thorne, but never made it past the entrance. He lacked the proper identification. Instead, he had waited outside until Elias returned. Brothels? Disgusting. The very thought repelled him. Why would any man seek such a place?
Because of this, his companions jokingly referred to him as “Abstinent Finch,” though in truth, his abstinence was more or less involuntary. A quiet sigh escaped him.
The others were too engrossed in Julian’s sharp retorts to notice. Seizing the moment, Alistair risked a glance at Elias, who sat in silent contemplation. Elias, as always, was staring at the back of Silas Croft’s head as Silas meticulously reviewed his notes across the room.
And, as always, Alistair regretted it. Why had he looked? Why this ceaseless curiosity? To distract himself, he posed a seemingly pointless question to Julian. “So, Julian, are you truly determined to remain celibate until the altar?”
Julian, who had been sprawled in his chair with proprietary ease, suddenly shifted his gaze directly to Alistair’s crotch. The intensity of it made Alistair instinctively cross his legs. What in God’s name?
“You are not my intended, Finch, so why the concern? Are you, perhaps, offering your services?” Julian’s voice was low, laced with a familiar, malicious humour. The others chuckled. Alistair kicked Julian sharply in the shin.
Such were his days—a repetitive cycle, each morning bleeding into the next.
---
Alone in his rooms, Alistair often found himself adrift in thought, contemplating all manner of scenarios. Inevitably, his mind sometimes drifted to forbidden fantasies.
Today, he wondered what it might have been like had he fallen for Julian Ashworth instead of Elias Thorne. It surely would have been less fraught. If Julian had captured his heart, he would not have endured the heartbreak caused by Elias’s messy entanglements with women. Still, heartbreak would likely have been his fate.
Neither Elias Thorne nor Julian Ashworth, after all, would ever love him. But at least, he considered, his heart would not ache for Silas Croft.
That train of thought ultimately led to familiar feelings of inferiority and a dull, simmering anger. In the end, he simply wished for graduation to come swiftly, for Elias Thorne to become nothing more than a distant, forgotten face.
---
Unconsciously, Alistair had developed a habit of placing his hands under his desk whenever he sat. This began, he recalled, during his second year at the preparatory school, and the cause was always the same—men.
His fingers toyed with the brass buckle on his trousers. Should he? Or shouldn’t he? A faint metallic click filled the quiet room as his nail tapped against the cold metal. Just as his thumb pressed to undo the fastening, a soft rap sounded at the door.
“Alistair, dear boy? Are you quite absorbed in your studies?” His mother’s gentle voice filtered through the wood.
“…Ah, no! I mean, yes! I am!” He nearly leaped out of his skin. Today, clearly, was not the day. Mortified, he buried his face in his arms. Confound it all.
---
Lately, Elias Thorne had become an intolerable nuisance.
Sometimes, when Silas glanced briefly at Alistair, Elias would deliberately initiate conversation with Silas, a possessive gleam in his eye. Silas, caught between them, would flick his gaze towards Alistair, his lips parting as if to speak, only to press them shut again. Then, as if acutely aware of Elias’s scrutiny, he would lower his head and reply in the faintest whisper.
“Y-yes…”
Just like that. Silas began to subtly seek Alistair’s attention more often, even starting to call him “Al.” Aside from a few select relatives, almost no one addressed him by that shortened name, so the change was striking. Silas seemed to think himself discreet, but he was not. The worst part was Elias’s inability to conceal his discomfort whenever Silas dared such familiarity.
“Silas, cease distracting Finch from his work.”
“What?” Silas blinked.
“Stop bothering him. Do you not comprehend?”
“Oh… uh, y-yes…”
When Silas stammered and avoided his gaze, Elias immaturely slammed his fist against the desk leg beside him. Alistair pretended not to notice. Annoyingly, the oblivious Silas seemed to think no one truly cared about him using “Al” anymore. He grew bolder, using it casually, as if it were perfectly normal.
“Uh, Al… I beg your pardon for disturbing your studies.”
Alistair stiffened, staring at Silas in disbelief. Was the boy mad? Elias sat barely a foot away. Inevitably, Elias pounded his fist on the desk again. Confound it.
“You! Silas Croft!”
“…Eh?”
The atmosphere soured instantly, thick with Elias’s blatant anger. “I told you.” His voice was low, dangerous. “I told you not to call him ‘Al,’ did I not?”
“…W-well…”
“Call him Alistair Finch. That is his name—Alistair Finch.”
Elias’s gaze sharpened, almost predatory, as he looked towards Alistair. Alistair hated that look, instinctively lowering his head. At that moment, Julian Ashworth, seated beside Alistair, casually draped an arm over his shoulder. Julian’s low, distinctive voice murmured near Alistair’s ear.
“Elias Thorne, if you persist in this fashion, you will truly ruin yourself.”
“What in blazes are you speaking of?” Elias snapped.
“I say you will come to regret it.” Julian smirked, and Alistair felt a flicker of irritation, for one reason only.
“Elias Thorne, you utter fool.”