Five in the afternoon is a terrible time to try to teach a class, Elliott thought, not for the first time. The freshman students he was instructing on red figure pottery were visibly wilting, despite his impassioned lecturing.

Hopefully, the actual professor of this class wouldn’t hold it against him. He was doing his best, and he thought it was pretty good, considering that it was right around dinnertime for most of them. Or nap time, whichever they were in more need of. The students had started off bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, likely curious to see if their TA crashed and burned during his first attempt to lead a seminar, then they’d been interested and engaged in the content Elliott was exploring.

There was only so much he could do to keep them awake, though. And it certainly didn’t help that the ground-floor window of the classroom faced the sun, which was setting at an agonizingly slow pace and boring a hole right into Elliott’s eyes.

As he switched topics, giving his notes a cursory glance to make sure he was on track, something glittered in the corner of the window. A car, passing through the half-empty lot. He would have ignored it, except he recognized it right away. The color and model were familiar.

For a brief second, he paused, long enough for a couple of people in the back row to perk up. He shook it off quickly, though, and launched back into his train of thought.

He felt good about the rest of the class. With the end of the allotted time in sight, a few of the keeners sat up a little straighter and listened better. Elliott became more and more comfortable, dropping in one of his prepared quips, hoping he came off as a quirky and amusing teaching assistant, not a desperately uncool one.

He’d expected to feel nervous. He had been nervous. All day, in fact. The only reason he wasn’t fainting from low blood sugar was because Aiden had texted him throughout the day, threatening him with dire consequences if he didn’t eat at least half a sandwich and an apple. He’d obeyed, and felt much better for it, even though peanut butter and jelly had been hard to swallow when his stomach was tight and his hands finely trembling.

But then, he’d stepped up to the front of the room instead of off to the side, and once he’d started talking about something he was passionate about, the nerves had melted away.

He was only in his master’s, but his PhD would come before he knew it, and he was ready to kick its ass and become a lecturer somewhere as soon as possible. From the approving looks the professor was giving him from the corner of the room, he thought he was doing okay.

He finished right on time. The professor shouted out a reminder to check their syllabus for next week, which Elliott thought was pretty generous of him. They were in the second half of the second semester. If the students in the class didn’t know by now to check their syllabus, there was really no hope for them.

With the room emptying out, Elliott was able to turn his attention to other things. From where he was standing, he could see the car he’d noticed before. He could also see that the car’s driver had gotten out and settled in to wait.

Elliott grinned, then quickly packed up his stuff.

With a wave to the professor, he hefted his messenger bag and walked briskly through the deserted hallways. It was early evening on a Thursday. Most of the students had better things to do than stick around an empty building until the sun went down.

When he punched through the door, Aiden’s car came into view, with Aiden himself leaning against it. Elliott jogged down the front steps toward him, smiling.

“You look like you drove straight out of a rom-com,” Elliott called.

“Do I?”

Aiden certainly made a picture. With his button-up shirt and khakis, his dark clean-cut good looks, and shiny vehicle that seemed expensive to even the least-knowledgeable, he was like a model in an editorial.

Few would have been able to tell the slope of his shoulders was different without the weight of a family law firm on them.

“Definitely.” Elliott slowed to a stop beside the car, slung his bag through the open window onto the back seat, then pressed his body up against Aiden’s, pinning him to the door. “How was your meeting?”

“Good.” Aiden nodded decisively, but excitement leaked in behind his eyes. “No promises yet, but they’re enthusiastic about the cause, and I think we’ll get a legacy commitment by the end of the year.”

“You will, I’m sure of it.” Elliott stretched up on his toes, leaning harder onto Aiden’s shoulders. “I thought I was going to get the bus today.”

Aiden didn’t seem to mind Elliott’s dead weight. “We finished writing that grant proposal early, and I thought you might like a ride home after your first time being a real teacher.”

Elliott smiled wider and bounced on his toes. “Yeah, I’m exhausted from my terrible, long day doing my dream job. I might need to go straight to bed.”

Aiden lifted his hand and rested it on Elliott’s lower back, spreading his fingers in a tickling caress. “You might, huh? Well, I worked extra hard today too. I’ll have to go to bed with you.”

“What a pair of boring old men we are,” Elliott said mournfully, but he wasn’t able to keep from smirking.

“I think we earned it.” Aiden dipped his head and captured Elliott’s mouth in a long, lazy kiss.

And as the sun set around them, casting their evening of simple pleasures in a rosy glow, Elliott knew they had.