Chapter Text
Violet Lanes lingered in her seat long after the rest of the seminar had emptied out, the buzz of conversation dissolving into the corridor while she pretended, poorly, that she needed just one more minute to finish packing her bag. In truth, she was buying time. Or courage. Or maybe she was simply stalling because Caitlyn Kiramman was still at the front of the room, stacking her papers with that calm, devastating precision that made Violet feel like a slightly malfunctioning robot vacuum.
Professor Caitlyn Kiramman, known among the undergrads as Ms. Kiramman, and among postgrads as Professor Cait, and among faculty as the one with the unsettingly perfect syllabus. Today she’d worn tortoise-shell glasses and a linen blouse rolled at the sleeves, which frankly should have been illegal. Her dark blue hair tied in ponytail, clean, tidy, with tendrils that framed her face. She moved with a quiet grace that bordered on intimidating without the intention to. She had also delivered a lecture on intertextuality that made half the class scramble to rewrite their thesis proposals.
Violet sat frozen until Caitlyn glanced up.
“Still with us, Ms. Lanes?” Caitlyn’s voice was steady, her british accent still faintly heard when she speaks, warm in a way that didn’t reach full softness, like a door left slightly ajar.
Violet’s brain, loyal soldier that it was, immediately abandoned her.
“Uh,” she said. “Yes. I mean. No. I mean. I’m leaving. Soon. Now.”
Caitlyn raised an eyebrow, the kind of eyebrow that could probably be used as teaching tool.
“Take your time,” she replied, with a small smile that made Violet’s heartbeat do something she suspected was clinically unsafe.
Violet swallowed, zipped her bag halfway, then unzipped it again for absolutely no reason except that her fingers seemed determined to embarrass her. She’d spent most of the semester avoiding direct conversation. Caitlyn was the type of professor who saw through people, and Violet preferred to remain opaque. Opaque was safe. Opaque didn't get emotional migraines.
But today, Caitlyn had quoted a line from Carson’s The Glass Essay and then looked straight at her, as if she knew Violet kept the poem printed and folded in her notebook like a pressed flower.
And now Violet’s legs refused to cooperate, which was exactly why she was the last person in the room.
“I liked your question earlier.” Caitlyn said as she slipped papers into her satchel.
“The one about reader complicity. Not many students are bold enough to bring that angle into a seminar.”
Violet blinked. “Me? Bold?”
“Why not?” Caitlyn stepped closer, not looming because Caitlyn never loomed, but attentive, like she’d turned the rest of the world to a lower frequency. “Your comment pushed the room. That’s rare.”
Violet didn’t blush often. But now her cheeks turned a shade of pink like her hair.
“I…mostly just talk when I’m sleep-deprived,” she said, aiming for humor and landing somewhere near unhinged-owl energy.
Caitlyn’ lips curved. “Then perhaps you should sleep less.”
Violet choked on nothing.
“Not that i recommend it academically,” Caitlyn added lightly, as though she hadn’t just tossed a verbal grenade into Violet’s chest. “But your mind works interestingly in those margins. I’d like to hear more from you in discussion.”
The words were ordinary. Professional. Encouraging. Yet Violet felt them like fingers tracing the edge of a windowpane.
“I’ll…try,” she said, though it came out like a promise she wasn’t sure she had permission to give.
Caitlyn nodded, stepping back to collect her coat from the chair. “Do you have a direction for your research proposal? As long as i remember, your first chapter due next month”
And then, with one subtle tilt of her head, she added:
“Or, if you prefer discussion away from fluorescent lighting, you may walk with me. I’m heading out.”
Violet’s lungs forgot how to be lungs.
Walk with her?
She should say no. For all the obvious, sensible, professional reasons.
But Caitlyn was already waiting at the threshold, holding the door open just slightly longer than necessary. Not expectant. Just…available. Present.
And something in Violet, something long dormant, something curious, shifted.
She stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
“I…yeah,” she said softly. “I’ll walk with you.”
Caitlyn smiled, brief and luminous.
And they stepped into the corridor together, two parallel lines beginning, very quietly, to bend.
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Violet walked half a step behind Caitlyn, and every neuron in her brain screamed variations of What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing. She wasn’t built for…whatever this was. Walking beside the English Department’s collective crush like it was normal.
She couldn’t believe she’d actually agreed.
Her feet must’ve made the decision while her mind was out to lunch.
Caitlyn held the door for her as they exited the building, a casual gesture, polite and unassuming. But for Violet, it was equivalent to someone lifting a cathedral bell and handing it to her like a pebble.
They stepped into the late-afternoon air. The campus held that golden kind of quiet, the hush between classes where the world felt suspended. Undergrad students lounged under trees, someone recited lines of poetry too loudly to impress the girl beside them. Classic English department wildlife.
Violet shoved her hands into her pockets, trying to look calm. Normal. Not like someone on the brink of fainting into shrubbery.
The thing was, Caitlyn Kiramman wasn’t just attractive. That would've been manageable. People could be attractive; Violet had built her entire personality around ignoring attractive people. But Caitlyn was the sort of person who seemed hand-carved from intention. She was adored by at least 85% of the department, romantically by many, academically by nearly all. She had this air of casual brilliance, like she was part poem, part lightning rod.
It wasn’t that she was blindingly beautiful in a beauty pageant way. She didn’t need that. Caitlyn’s looks were the kind that crept up on you and stayed lodged in your ribs, piercing deep blue eyes behind tortoise-shell glasses, sculpted calm in her posture, a subtle half-smile that felt like a secret she hadn’t decide whether to share.
“So,” Caitlyn said, glancing over with that quietly direct gaze. “Tell me about your thesis.”
Violet nearly tripped over air.
“My…thesis?”
“Yes,” Caitlyn said, amused. “You know, your research? The long, emotionally taxing document that will haunt your dreams until it’s done?”
Violet wanted to melt into the floor. “I…haven’t started haunting…yet.”
Caitlyn hummed, amused. “You’re one of my advisees, Ms. Lanes. I’m supposed to know how your progress is going.” Then, with a soft tilt of her voice: “I have to, and I’d like to.”
That last part hit Violet in the sternum.
“I’ve been circling around a topic.”
“Circling?” Caitlyn echoed.
“Orbiting,” Violet corrected. “Like a satellite. A very confused satellite.”
Caitlyn’s lips curved. “Is it something about contemporary queer narratives?”
Violet stared at her.
“How did you know that?”
“You lit up when we discussed it weeks ago,” Caitlyn said simply. “You tried to hide it, but some people can’t mask passion entirely.”
This time, Violet really did misstep.
She caught herself but, but barely.
Caitlyn didn’t comment, just slowed her pace, subtle, considerate.
Violet tried to breathe normally. Tried not to interpret every microgesture like she was decoding ancient prophecy.
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “I’m interested in how modern queer writers rewrite emotional lineage accross texts. Sort of like…literary inheritance. How writing gives us ancestors.”
Caitlyn hummed, sounds genuinely pleased. “That’s a beautiful angle. And exactly the kind of work i expect from you.”
Violet’s stomach performed an unsupervised somersault.
They rounded corner, the campus cafe coming into view. Caitlyn shifted her satchel slightly, a small, thoughtful movement.
“Do you want coffee?” she asked. “Or tea? Or something with sugar? I’m heading that way” Caitlyn gesturing to cafe direction.
Violet opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
She tried for casual and achieved something closer to electrocuted bird.
“Um. Thank you Professor Cait, maybe next time, i-my part time shift starts soon”
Caitlyn glanced at her watch.
“Right, next time then. Just don’t forget to send me your first chapter drafts before next month, Ms. Lanes”
And then Caitlyn hesitated, just a beat, before adding, “If you ever want to discuss about your research further, my office is open, even outside official hours as long as i’m still around the campus.”
Violet nodded, trying not to combust. “I…will.”
They parted way, walking in opposite directions, but Violet swore she could still feel the imprint of Caitlyn’s attention on her long after.
For the rest of her the day, she didn’t hear a single word from her coworkers or customers, all she could think about was the tortoise-shell glasses, the smell of lavender (or whatever perfume Caitlyn wore that afternoon), and the unexpected spark of something that felt suspiciously like possibility.