Page 128 of Proof By Contradiction
I bite my lip. He tightens his grip, the friction is—fuck. The friction of a hand that knows the speed and the pressure and the exact?—
He turns me, face to the wall. My palms flat against the plaster. His chest against my back, the blazer still on, the belt undone, but the shirt still tucked. His hips grind against me in short, controlled thrusts, his cock hard and insistent against my arse through the fabric of our trousers. We don’t have time for more. We don’t have, his hand comes around, covers my mouth.
I breathe against his palm. His other hand on my cock, the rhythm escalating. His mouth behind my ear—and this?—
His blazer button presses into my shoulder blade through my t-shirt, brass cold through cotton. He hasn’t taken the jacket off. Collar done up, cuffs buttoned, belt undone, and everything else in place. He is conducting the whole surrender from inside the uniform.
He’s humping me in a cupboard between mops and bleach bottles.
I come into his hand. Silent except for the sound against his palm, the bitten-off noise that he absorbs. My legs shake, the shelving rattles. We both freeze, his hand still on my mouth, his cock hard against my arse through his trousers, neither of us breathing.
The reception continues on the other side of the wall; nobody heard.
I turn around, drop to my knees on the cold, gritty industrial tile, his cock in my mouth and his hand in my hair, the sound he makes filling the dark.
My hands find his thighs through the wool. He’s still in his trousers, the fly open, the rest of him intact. I work him with my mouth and the hand that’s not braced on his hip, his weight shifting against the door, his other hand in my hair, tightening, loosening, tightening again as if he keeps remembering not to grip and forgetting to remember.
His thigh trembles under my palm. The wool is warm now. His breath above me catches, an indrawn syllable that doesn’t make it to a word.
He comes with his head tipped back against the door. I feel it, the shudder through his thighs, the hand tightening in my hair, the sound locked deep in his throat. I swallow, stand. Wipe my mouth.
Dark. Both of us are breathing bleach, floor wax, sex, three metres of wall, and whatever comes next. His breath slowing, mine not.
‘This is insane,’ he says. The composure gone, nothing left but the accent and the breath and the man.
‘Yeah.’
‘We can’t keep?—’
‘I know.’
We know, and we keep.
His hand on my face, thumb across my cheekbone, the kiss in a cleaning cupboard among mops—tenderness that doesn’t care where it is.
I leave first, smooth the shirt. Run a hand through my hair. Walk back into the foyer like I’ve been to the toilet and definitely haven’t been on my knees in a cupboard.
Laurence follows five minutes later. The blazer’s buttoned. The collar’s straight, almost. The top button is one millimetre wrong.
I see the colleague sees it.
She’s by the cheese platter. Cup in hand. Her eyes track Laurence as he re-enters, and the scan takes two seconds—the collar, the flush still visible, the hair slightly rearranged at the temple. Her attention shifts to me. Back to him, the triangle completes.
She doesn’t speak. That’s the worst part. But the look she gives him is knowing and complete.
The look has a department behind it. A career. Years of colleague history—shared supervisions, end-of-term meals, handovers at the printer. She’s been collecting evidence not to use, the way decent people in offices collect evidence not to use, and tonight she’s logged another file underLaurence Haldrey, not my problem until it is.
He knows she knows. She knows he knows she knows. The silence between them isn’t new. Only the specificity is. Before, she had inferred. Now she has a top button one millimetre wrong and a flushed student across the room and the triangle of a glance that connected them.
She turns back to her wine. The cheese platter enters its final act. The reception carries on.
Laurence’s eyes find mine across the room. In them: the same knowledge. We’re being seen. And neither of us can stop.
Outside. Manchester is doing its thing, dark, wet, the streetlights making the pavement look like a noir film set. I check my phone.
Ronan.
Arriving Friday. Want to see your campus properly this time.
