Chapter Text
January in New York had a particular cruelty to it—not the theatrical cruelty of February, with its blizzards and valentines, but something quieter, more insidious. The holidays were over. The lights had come down. The city had returned to work with the grim determination of a hangover, and the sky above Washington Square Park was the color of old laundry water.
Shane Hollander navigated the corridors of NYU's Silver Center with the practiced efficiency of someone who had memorized the building's geometry down to the last water fountain, though his mind was currently three dimensions deep into a differential equation he'd been wrestling with since breakfast.
If the manifold is compact and orientable, then the integral of the curvature form over—
He nearly collided with a fire extinguisher.
Right. Walking. Pay attention to walking.
The problem was that he was always thinking about something else. Always. His brain was a machine that never quite stopped whirring, even when he desperately wanted it to power down. Right now, it was whirring about the sheer, bureaucratic absurdity of his situation. Three and a half years into a mathematics degree with a near-perfect GPA, and he was being forced—forced—to take a literature class. A literature class in Russian, no less. Not the language, thank God, because that would have been a catastrophe of an entirely different magnitude, but the literature. Translated, supposedly, but still.
How am I going to graduate on time?
The thought looped like a broken record. He'd done the calculations. He'd done them twelve times. Fourteen, if you counted the ones he'd scribbled on the back of a coffee shop napkin at 2 a.m. last Thursday. If he took this extra credit course—this Russian literature course—and passed it, he could shave an entire semester off his timeline. Graduate early. Get out. Move on to the next thing, which was graduate school, which was more mathematics, which was safe.
But literature.
He pushed his glasses up his nose—a nervous habit, though everything about Shane was technically a nervous habit—and tried to remember the last time he'd read a novel for pleasure. The Hobbit. Sixth grade. He'd liked the maps. He'd liked the internal consistency of the world-building. He'd liked that Bilbo Baggins kept a detailed schedule of his meals.
That was not going to help him here.
The classroom was supposedly in the old part of the building, the wing that hadn't been renovated since the Carter administration, and as Shane turned the corner, the fluorescent lighting dimmed noticeably, replaced by something yellower, older, more inclined to cast shadows. He slowed his pace, adjusting. The change in atmosphere was almost physical—a drop in temperature, a thickening of the air. Like walking into a church. Or a mausoleum.
Stop it, he told himself. It's just a room. It's just a class. It's just a Russian professor who, according to the student reviews you absolutely did not spend two hours reading last night, has a reputation for being terrifying.
He was so absorbed in this internal monologue—so deeply, comfortably lost in the architecture of his own anxieties—that he didn't hear the footsteps behind him until two hands landed on his shoulders and a voice yelled, "SHANE!"
Shane made a sound that was less a scream and more a sharp, startled exhalation, like a kettle finally coming to a boil. He jerked sideways, his bag swinging, his glasses nearly flying off his face, and he would have fallen if the hands hadn't steadied him.
"Oh my God," he breathed, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Shit, Hayd."
Hayden Pike was laughing so hard he had to brace himself against the wall. His grin was enormous, his dark eyes creased at the corners, and he looked, as he always did, like he'd just been told the funniest joke in the world. "Bro," he managed, "bro, your face."
"I'm going to kill you," Shane said, very calmly, very precisely. "I'm going to kill you and they're going to find your body in the Hudson and I'm going to feel nothing."
"You screamed like a little—"
"I did not scream. I vocalized a startle response. There's a difference."
Hayden wiped a tear from his eye. "You're so weird, dude."
This was, objectively, true. Shane had accepted this about himself years ago. He was weird in the way that some numbers were prime—not by choice, but by nature. He didn't make friends easily, didn't read social cues instinctively, didn't understand why people said one thing when they clearly meant another. But Hayden had bulldozed through all of that freshman year, refusing to be intimidated by Shane's awkward silences or his tendency to over-explain or the way he sometimes had to leave parties early because the noise became too much, physically too much, like sandpaper on his nerves.
Hayden was his best friend. Possibly his only real friend, if you didn't count Rose, which he did, but Rose was different. Rose was—
"Where are you headed?" Hayden asked, falling into step beside him. "You look like you're going to a funeral."
"Close," Shane muttered. "Russian literature."
Hayden's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, for real? You're taking that class? With that professor?"
"Don't."
"Rozanov? Professor Rozanov? The guy they call the 'Silver Wolf' because he's got all that white-blond hair and he's, like, six-foot-five and looks like he could bench press a car and eat you alive?"
Shane had not heard this nickname. He wished he hadn't heard it now. "I have to take an extra humanities credit to graduate early. This was the only one that fit my schedule."
"Dude." Hayden shook his head slowly, with the solemn gravity of a man delivering a eulogy. "You're screwed."
"Thank you, Hayden. That's very helpful."
"I'm serious. I had a buddy who took his Dostoevsky seminar last year. Said the guy made him cry. In class. In front of everyone."
Shane stopped walking. "Cry?"
"Like, actual tears. Full breakdown. Had to go to the counseling center."
Shane considered this information. He considered dropping the class. He considered dropping out of university entirely and moving to a small cabin in the woods where no one would ever ask him to interpret symbolism again. He considered the differential equation he'd left unfinished on his desk, which was waiting for him, patient and beautiful and utterly devoid of emotional ambushes.
"I'll be fine," he said, because he had to say something.
Hayden clapped him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit. Hey, you're going to practice tonight, right?"
Shane blinked. The question was almost insulting. "Obviously."
"Just checking. You've got, like, seventeen million things going on. I figured maybe you'd—"
"I would never skip practice." He said it with a certainty that surprised even him. Hockey was the one place where his brain stopped spinning. On the ice, everything was simple: the puck, the goal, the burn in his lungs, the singular focus of a body in motion. He was the captain for a reason. And it certainly wasn't for his social skills. "See you there. Seven o'clock."
"See you, bro." Hayden grinned and veered off toward the staircase, leaving Shane alone in the dim corridor.
He stood there for a moment, adjusting his glasses again, running his thumb along the edge of his bag strap. The door to the classroom was at the end of the hall, old oak with a brass handle, slightly ajar. Through the gap, he could see darkness. Or rather, not darkness—dimness. The kind of dimness that suggested high ceilings and deep shadows and the particular gloom of a room designed in an era before architects believed in natural light.
You can do this, he told himself. It's one class. One semester. You've solved problems that would make other math majors weep. You can read a few books about sad Russians.
He pushed open the door.
The room was an amphitheater—tiered rows of wooden desks curving downward toward a massive chalkboard at the front. The chalkboard was ancient, the kind that required actual chalk, and someone had already written something in Cyrillic across the top. Shane couldn't read it. He didn't want to read it. The windows were tall and narrow, covered in a film of grime that turned the afternoon light into something sepia-toned, nostalgic, almost mournful. The air smelled of dust and old paper and something else—something cold, like winter settling into the walls.
There were perhaps fifteen students scattered throughout the rows, most of them huddled in the back, as far from the podium as possible. Shane understood this instinct. He understood it intimately.
He scanned the room quickly, efficiently, his mind already running calculations. Where to sit. Not too close to the front—that would mark him as a try-hard, and try-hards got called on. Not too far in the back—that would mark him as disinterested, and disinterested students also got called on, if only to humiliate them. Somewhere in the middle. Somewhere strategic. The fourth row, maybe, off to the left side, where he could see the board but also had a clear line of sight to the door. An escape route, in case of emergency.
He took the seat, slid his bag onto the floor, and began arranging his supplies with the meticulous care of a surgeon preparing for an operation. Laptop. Charger. Notebook—graph paper, because that was all he owned. Three pens, all black, all the same brand. A highlighter. A granola bar, in case the class ran long and his blood sugar dropped.
He was uncapping his pen when a familiar voice said, "Shaney!"
He looked up. Rose Landry was descending the stairs toward him like a sunbeam breaking through clouds—all warmth and movement and that particular shade of amber-red hair that caught the light no matter how dim the room. Her eyes were greenish-blue today, or maybe blueish-green; they shifted depending on what she wore, and today she was wearing a cream-colored sweater that made her look soft and luminous and entirely out of place in this gloomy lecture hall.
"Hey," she said, sliding into the seat beside him. She smelled like vanilla and something floral—jasmine, maybe. "I saved you a spot."
"You didn't save me a spot. You just sat down."
"I manifested you into this seat. It's different."
Shane felt something in his chest loosen, just a little. Rose had that effect on him. She always had, even back when they'd been—well. Even back then.
"How's Svetlana?" he asked, because he knew it would make Rose light up, and he wanted to see that. He always wanted to see that.
Rose's entire face transformed. It was like watching a time-lapse of flowers opening. "She's amazing. Oh my God, Shane. She's so amazing. We're going to her parents' dacha this weekend. Do you know what a dacha is?"
"A Russian cottage?"
"It's more than a cottage. It's like—" Rose waved her hands, searching for the words. "It's like a vibe. It's in the middle of the woods, and there's a banya—that's a sauna—and her mom makes this pickled everything, and Sveta says we can go hiking and I can practice my Russian and—" She stopped, blushing. "Sorry. I'm doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Talking about her too much."
"You're not." Shane meant it. He liked watching Rose happy. He remembered a time when they'd been tangled up in something that should never have happened—a brief, well-intentioned attempt at romance that had fizzled not because they didn't care for each other, but because the fundamental chemistry was wrong. They'd dated for exactly six weeks sophomore year. The talking had been great. The laughing had been great. The quiet evenings spent doing nothing in particular had been wonderful. But the physical part—the kissing, the touching, the expectation of something more—had been quietly, persistently awful. Shane had thought something was wrong with him. Rose had thought something was wrong with her. And then one evening, she had sat him down at a nice restaurant, candlelit and serious, and said: I think I'm not doing it for you. Maybe you're not really into me… or girls in general?
She hadn't said it cruelly. She had said it like she was pointing out a typo in a shared document—curious, helpful, genuinely interested in solving the problem. And Shane had sat there, fork halfway to his mouth, and felt something in his brain click. Like a key turning in a lock. Like the last piece of a puzzle sliding into place.
Oh, he had said.
Yeah, Rose had replied, and she had smiled, and they had ordered dessert, and by the time they left the restaurant they had been something new: not exes with baggage, but friends with a deeper understanding. Rose had given him the gift of clarity. She had given him himself.
"So," Rose said now, pulling him back to the present, "are you ready for this? Russian lit with the terrifying Professor Rozanov?"
"No," Shane said honestly.
"Same. I've heard he's brutal. Like, brutal brutal. Like, he made a philosophy major switch to business."
Shane frowned. "That seems excessive."
"Welcome to the humanities, baby." Rose patted his arm. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."
"You're going to protect me?"
"I took his colleague's class last year, remember? With Sveta as the TA?" Her eyes went dreamy. "I know the material. I can be your lifeline."
Shane had forgotten that. Rose had taken Russian literature on a whim, fallen in love with the texts, and then fallen in love with the teaching assistant—tall, serious Svetlana with her quiet laugh and her encyclopedic knowledge of Chekhov. The class had ended, but Rose had kept showing up to office hours. And then to coffee. And then to dinner. And then—
"Well," Shane said, "at least I'm not the only one suffering."
"You're welcome."
They settled into a comfortable silence. Shane clicked his pen open and closed, open and closed, a rhythmic stim that helped him focus. Rose scrolled through her phone, occasionally showing him pictures of Svetlana—Svetlana at a farmers' market, Svetlana reading on a fire escape, Svetlana making a face at the camera while holding a very large cabbage.
"Her parents grew that," Rose said, pointing at the cabbage. "They're very proud."
"It's a very nice cabbage."
"You're a very nice person."
Shane smiled. It was small, barely there, but it was real.
And then the door at the front of the room opened.
Not the door they had come through—the one at the top of the amphitheater, the one that led to the hallway. A different door. A smaller door. One that led, presumably, to an office or a coat closet or some other faculty-only space. It opened without ceremony, without warning, and the man who stepped through it was—
Large.
That was the first word that came to Shane's mind, and it was not adequate. It was not nearly adequate. This man was not simply large. He was imposing. He was tall—easily six-four, maybe six-five—with shoulders that seemed to have been designed by someone who had never heard the word subtle. He was wearing a dark suit, perfectly tailored, and a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top. No tie. The top buttons were undone, just two, revealing a sliver of throat and the hint of a gold chain.
His face was all sharp angles and hard planes—a jaw that could cut glass, cheekbones that cast shadows in the pale January light. His nose had been broken at least once, maybe twice, the bridge slightly crooked in a way that should have been a flaw but somehow made him more striking. His hair was the color of winter wheat, almost white, cropped short on the sides but longer on top, and it looked thick and soft in a way that made Shane's fingers itch.
And his eyes.
Shane had seen blue eyes before. But this man's eyes were something else entirely. They were pale, almost colorless, the blue of a glacier, the blue of a winter sky just before the sun sets and everything goes dark. They were cold. Not cold like the room—that was just temperature. Cold like a blade. Cold like a warning.
The man walked to the podium with a gait that was neither hurried nor leisurely. He simply moved, and the room seemed to hold its breath around him. He set down a leather briefcase. He opened it. He removed a sheaf of papers. He arranged them with the precision of someone who had done this a thousand times and would do it a thousand more.
Not once did he look at the students.
Shane realized he had stopped breathing. He forced himself to inhale. The air was cold and thin and tasted like chalk dust.
This is Professor Rozanov, he thought. Ilya Rozanov. The Silver Wolf. The man who makes students cry.
He had read the reviews. He had spent two hours last night reading them, scrolling through RateMyProfessors with a kind of morbid fascination. Brutal. Unforgiving. The hardest class I've ever taken. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about anything except the material. He will tear your paper apart in front of everyone and you will thank him for it.
Shane had thought the reviews were exaggerations. Students loved to complain. Students loved to dramatize.
Looking at the man now, he wasn't so sure.
Professor Rozanov finished arranging his papers. He straightened his cufflinks. He adjusted the gold chain at his collar—Shane could see now that it was a crucifix, small and understated, resting against the hollow of his throat. And then, finally, he looked up.
His gaze swept the room. It was not a friendly gaze. It was not curious or welcoming or even particularly interested. It was the gaze of someone taking inventory. Here are the students. They are here. They will learn or they will fail. Their choice.
When his eyes reached Shane's row, Shane felt it—a cold pressure, like a hand on the back of his neck. The eyes paused on him for a fraction of a second. No longer. No shorter. Just long enough for Shane to feel seen.
Then the gaze moved on.
"Good afternoon," Professor Rozanov said.
His voice was low. Not deep, exactly—not the bass rumble Shane had expected—but low, and cold, and precise. The kind of voice that would sound the same whether he was ordering coffee or delivering a eulogy. His accent was unmistakable—Russian, the consonants sharp, the vowels stretched. Gosh it only made him hotter.
"I am Professor Ilya Rozanov." He did not smile. He did not introduce himself further. "This is Russian Literature 347. We meet twice a week. Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than two sessions without documentation approved by registrar's office, you fail. I don't accept excuses. I don't accept emails explaining why you sick. I don't accept emotional appeals. You're adults. Not kids."
Shane wrote this down. He didn't know why. He was never going to miss a class. But his hand moved anyway, the words appearing on his graph paper in his neat, precise handwriting.
Professor Rozanov turned to the board. He picked up a piece of chalk—white, not colored—and began to write. His handwriting was elegant, almost calligraphic, the Cyrillic letters flowing together in a way that Shane could not read but could appreciate. Beneath each Russian title, he wrote the English translation.
Мёртвые души — Dead Souls
Преступление и наказание — Crime and Punishment
Братья Карамазовы — The Brothers Karamazov
Анна Каренина — Anna Karenina
Мастер и Маргарита — The Master and Margarita
The list went on. Twelve titles in total. Twelve books. Twelve weeks of reading.
Shane copied them down. His hand was starting to cramp.
Professor Rozanov finished writing and turned back to face them. His expression had not changed. It was blank, severe, the face of a man who had seen everything and been impressed by none of it.
"This is your syllabus," he said. "You will read one book per week. You will write a response paper every Friday. The papers must be between five and seven pages, double-spaced, twelve-point Times New Roman, one-inch margins. I will not read papers that do not meet these specifications. I will not read papers that are late. I will not read papers that are submitted by email. You will bring a physical copy to class and place it on my desk before the lecture begins."
Shane wrote: Physical copy. Before lecture. Not email.
"There will be midterm and final exam," Professor Rozanov continued. "Midterm covers first six books. Final covers second six books, with emphasis on comparative analysis. You will be required to participate in class discussions. I don't care if you're shy. I don't care if English is not your first language. I don't care if you have social anxiety. You speak, or you lose points."
Shane's stomach tightened. Participation. He had forgotten about participation. He hated participation. Participation required talking, and talking required thinking on his feet, and thinking on his feet required processing spoken language in real time, which was something his brain had never been particularly good at.
You can do this, he told himself. You can prepare. You can write down things to say ahead of time. You can—
"Before we begin," Professor Rozanov said, and his voice cut through Shane's spiral like a knife through butter, "I want to test your knowledge."
He set down the chalk. He walked to the center of the room, just below the first tier of desks, and stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. He looked up at the students. His eyes were pale and cold and utterly unreadable.
"I am asking, you are responding," he said. "Not graded. I don't care if you answer correctly. I care only about knowing where you stand. What you know. What you think you know. What you do not know at all."
He paused. The silence in the room was absolute. Shane could hear his own heartbeat.
"First question," Professor Rozanov said. "What is significance of 'superfluous man' in 19 century Russian literature?"
No one spoke. Shane looked around. A girl in the front row was staring at her hands. A boy in the back was chewing on his pen. No one made eye contact with the professor.
Professor Rozanov waited. His expression did not change. He seemed perfectly content to stand there forever, in the cold and the silence, until someone answered or the sun burned out.
Finally, Rose raised her hand.
Shane exhaled.
"Landry," Professor Rozanov said. He did not sound pleased or displeased. He sounded like a machine reading a name off a list. And how did he know Rose's name?
"The 'superfluous man' is a character type that emerged in Russian literature of the 19th century," Rose said, her voice steady. "He's typically an educated, intelligent man of privilege who is unable to act meaningfully in society. He's disillusioned, alienated, and often ends up doing nothing—hence 'superfluous.' Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is usually considered the prototype."
Professor Rozanov listened without moving. When Rose finished, he said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded. Just once. Just barely.
"Adequate," he said.
Rose smiled. It was a small smile, cautious, but it was there.
Professor Rozanov turned his gaze to the rest of the room. "Second question. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Contrast philosophical approaches to suffering."
Silence again. Shane looked down at his notebook. He had never read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. He had heard the names. He knew they were famous. He knew they wrote very long books. That was the extent of his knowledge.
A student in the back row—a boy with curly hair and a nervous voice—ventured an answer. Something about redemption versus resignation. Professor Rozanov listened, then said, "Incorrect," with no inflection whatsoever, and moved on to the next question.
Shane stopped listening. Not intentionally. His brain simply... drifted. He was still looking at the professor—he couldn't seem to look away—but he was no longer processing the words. He was processing other things. The way the light from the windows caught the edges of his hair. The way his hands, when he gestured, were large and veined and somehow elegant. The way his suit fit across his shoulders, not tight exactly, but precisely, as if it had been made for him by someone who understood the geometry of his body.
He's very..., Shane thought, and then stopped. He didn't know what he was thinking. He didn't know what word was supposed to come after very. He only knew that he couldn't look away, and that something in his chest was doing something strange—fluttering, maybe, or tightening, or both.
It's fear, he told himself. You're afraid of him. That's all. He's terrifying and you're afraid and that's why you can't stop staring.
But that didn't explain why his mouth was dry. Or why his fingers were tingling. Or why, when Professor Rozanov turned slightly and the light caught the crucifix at his throat, Shane felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to reach out and touch it.
Stop it, he told himself. Stop it. You're being ridiculous.
He forced his gaze down to his notebook. He forced himself to write down the questions and answers he had missed. He forced himself to think about anything other than the man at the front of the room.
It didn't work.
The questions continued. Professor Rozanov moved through them with mechanical efficiency—What is the significance of the 'underground' in Notes from Underground? How does Chekhov's use of subtext differ from Ibsen's? What role does the Orthodox Church play in The Brothers Karamazov?—and one by one, the students answered or failed to answer. Professor Rozanov did not react to either outcome. He simply noted, filed, moved on.
When he had asked his final question—something about Anna Karenina's dream, which no one could answer—he returned to the podium and looked out at the class.
"That's all," he said. "For next session, read first hundred pages of Dead Souls. Will be a quiz. Will be graded. Don't be late."
The class exhaled. Backpacks zipped. Laptops snapped shut. The scrape of chairs against the old wooden floor filled the amphitheater like the sound of a hundred small escapes. Shane was already packing his things—laptop, charger, notebook, pens, highlighter, the uneaten granola bar—his movements quick and mechanical, when the professor's voice cut through the noise.
"Hollander."
Shane froze.
Not because the voice was loud. It wasn't. It was the same low, cold register as before, the kind of voice that didn't need to raise itself to be heard. It simply was, and the room seemed to contract around it.
Hollander.
His last name. His last name. How did he—the roster, obviously, the class roster, he must have memorized it, that was the only explanation, but still, still, the sound of it in that accent—Hollander, the H soft, almost breathless, the vowels stretched—made Shane's stomach drop like he'd missed a step on a staircase.
He looked up.
Professor Rozanov was standing at the podium, his pale eyes fixed on Shane with the same flat, unreadable expression he'd worn all class. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't frowning. He was simply waiting, his large hands resting on the stack of papers, his posture utterly still.
Shane became acutely aware of several things at once: that his heart was now beating somewhere in his throat, that his palms had started to sweat, that Rose was looking at him with a small furrow between her eyebrows.
"Me?" Shane heard himself say. The word came out smaller than he intended. Thinner.
Professor Rozanov did not dignify this with a response. He simply continued to wait, his gaze unwavering.
Oh God, Shane thought. Oh God oh God oh God.
He turned to Rose. She was already leaning in, her voice a low whisper. "Go," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"But—"
"It's fine." She squeezed his arm, quick and reassuring. "Probably just wants to talk about your schedule or something. Go."
She stood up, gathered her own things, and followed the stream of students climbing the stairs toward the exit. Shane watched her go with something close to panic. The door at the top of the amphitheater swung open and closed, open and closed, and with each swing, another student disappeared into the hallway, into freedom, into the ordinary January afternoon where professors did not call you out by name for reasons you could not fathom.
And then the door swung shut for the last time, and the latch clicked into place, and Shane was alone in the room with Ilya Rozanov.
The silence was enormous.
Professor Rozanov did not speak immediately. He busied himself with his papers—straightening them, tapping the edges against the podium to align them, sliding them into a leather folder. His movements were slow, deliberate, as if he had all the time in the world and knew that Shane had nowhere else to be.
Shane, meanwhile, was fairly certain he was going to combust. He stood frozen beside his desk, his backpack half-zipped, his pen still clutched in his left hand. His mind was running in frantic circles: What did I do? Did I do something wrong? Did I look at him wrong? Did he see me staring? Oh God, he definitely saw me staring, he knows, he knows I couldn't stop looking at him, he's going to tell me to drop the class, he's going to tell me I'm not welcome here, he's going to—
"Hollander."
The professor's voice pulled him back. Shane realized he had been asked a question. Or maybe not a question—maybe just his name again, repeated because Shane hadn't responded the first time.
"Sorry," Shane said. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "Yes. I'm—yes. Hollander. That's me."
Professor Rozanov looked at him. The pale blue eyes were still unreadable, but there was something in the set of his jaw, something in the way his head tilted just slightly to the left, that suggested he was... not amused, exactly. But perhaps curious. In the way a cat might be curious about a mouse that hadn't yet realized it was cornered.
"You are Shane Hollander," the professor said. It was not a question.
"Yes." Shane's fingers tightened around his pen. "Yes, I am."
Professor Rozanov picked up a sheet of paper from the podium—a printout, Shane could see now, covered in dense text and numbers. The professor's eyes moved across it slowly, methodically, like a man reading a map.
"Science student," he said. "Mathematics. Very good grades." He paused, scanning further. "Calculus. Advanced Calculus. Differential equations. Linear algebra. Topology." Each word landed like a small, precise hammer blow. "Real analysis. Complex analysis. Number theory. And also—" another pause, "—hockey. Captain of hockey team."
Shane said nothing. He didn't know what to say. The professor was listing his life like a grocery list, and there was something deeply unsettling about hearing it spoken aloud in that low, accented voice.
Professor Rozanov set down the paper. He looked up. His eyes met Shane's, and for a long moment, neither of them moved.
"Then," the professor said, "I have question."
Shane swallowed. "Okay."
"What made Shane Hollander—" he gestured vaguely with one large hand, "—perfect science student, captain of hockey team—come to Russian literature class?"
The question hung in the cold air between them.
Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. His brain, which was usually so good at processing information, had apparently decided to take a vacation. He could feel the heat rising up his neck, spreading across his cheeks. He was blushing. He knew he was blushing. He couldn't stop it.
"I—" he started. Stopped. Started again. "I needed a humanities credit. To graduate early. And this was—" Don't say it, he told himself. Do not say it was the only class that fit your schedule. Do not imply that his class was your last resort. That would be rude. That would be insulting. That would be—
"This was the only class that aligned with my schedule," Shane said.
The words came out in a rush, honest and unfiltered, because Shane Hollander did not know how to lie. He had never learned. Lies required a kind of social agility he simply did not possess.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Shane stared at his shoes. His sneakers were gray, slightly scuffed, purchased thirteen months ago from a store near campus. He was thinking about his sneakers very intently because if he thought about his sneakers, he did not have to think about what he had just said, and if he did not have to think about what he had just said, he did not have to confront the fact that he had just told a terrifying Russian professor that his class was an afterthought.
You're an idiot, he told himself. You're a complete and utter idiot. He's going to kill you. He's going to fail you before you've even written a single paper. He's going to—
A sound.
Shane looked up.
Professor Ilya Rozanov was laughing.
It was not a loud laugh. It was not a warm laugh. It was a short, sharp exhale—a huff, almost—that might have been mistaken for a cough if not for the slight upward twitch at the corner of his mouth. The expression was gone almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced once again by the cold, blank mask, but for one brief moment, Shane had seen it.
Something human.
"Okay," the professor said. "You are funny."
Shane blinked. "I'm... what?"
"Funny." The professor said the word like he was testing it, turning it over in his mouth. "You say truth. Most students lie. They say, 'Oh, Professor Rozanov, I love Russian literature, I have always wanted to study Dostoevsky, this class is dream come true.'" He said this in a slightly higher pitch, a crude approximation of a student's voice, and Shane realized with a start that the professor was mocking. "But you. You say, 'This is only class that fit my schedule.'" He paused. "I respect honesty."
Shane didn't know what to do with this. He stood there, frozen, his brain still trying to catch up.
Professor Rozanov's expression shifted back to severity. "But honesty not enough to pass class. You know nothing of literature. Yes?"
It was not a question, but Shane nodded anyway.
"So," the professor continued, "how you expect to graduate?"
Shane's mind raced. He thought of Rose, of her steady confidence, of her promise to help. "My friend," he said. "Rose. Landry. She's very good at literature. She took a similar class last year. She said she would help me."
Professor Rozanov's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. "Landry." He said the name slowly, as if tasting it. "Yes. Landry is good. Landry knows texts. But Landry," he leaned forward slightly, and the movement made the crucifix at his throat catch the light, "Landry cannot make you pass."
Shane's stomach dropped.
"You need more than friend," the professor said. "You need structure. You need guidance. You need—" he paused, searching for the word, "—foundation."
Shane said nothing. His heart was pounding so hard he was certain the professor could hear it.
Professor Rozanov straightened up. He folded his arms across his massive chest—a gesture that made his biceps strain against the fabric of his shirt in a way that Shane absolutely did not notice, did not notice at all—and looked down at Shane with those pale, cold eyes.
"Come to my office hour," he said.
Shane's brain short-circuited. "What?"
"Office hour." The professor said the words slowly, as if Shane were hard of hearing. "Time when student come to professor for help. You know concept?"
"Yes," Shane said quickly. "Yes, I know—I mean, yes, of course I know what office hours are, I just—" He stopped. Swallowed. "You want me to come to your office hours?"
"I just said this." Professor Rozanov's tone was dry, almost impatient. "You come. We will start with something. We will figure it out."
We will figure it out. The words echoed in Shane's head, strange and improbable. This man—this cold, terrifying, unapproachable man who had just spent an hour making students feel like insects under a microscope—was offering to help him.
"Why?" Shane asked. The word came out before he could stop it.
Professor Rozanov looked at him for a long moment. The silence stretched, thin and fragile, like ice over deep water.
"Because," the professor said finally, "I do not like when students fail. And you, Hollander—" he picked up his leather folder, tucked it under his arm, "—you will fail. Without help. This is not mathematics. This is not hockey. This is something else. And you need to learn it."
He moved his head toward the door. A single, sharp gesture. Dismissal.
"That is all."
Shane stood there for a moment longer, his body not quite obeying his brain. Then he nodded—once, twice, a jerky, birdlike motion—and managed to choke out, "Okay. Thank you. I'll—thank you."
He turned. He walked toward the door. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else, someone who had never learned to walk properly. The door was heavy, and he had to push it with both hands, and when it swung open, the cold air from the hallway hit his face like a slap.
He stepped through. The door closed behind him with a soft, final click.
Fuck. Not only was Shane taking one of the hardest literature classes, but he would also have to endure office hours with the most attractive man who ever walked the earth? Shane was screwed.