Eleanor sat at her office desk, the lamplight pooling over a stack of ungraded essays that hadn't moved in hours. Outside, the dusk had turned the sky a soft steel blue, streaked faintly with winter clouds. The windows were slightly fogged, and the radiator hissed gently beside her.
Winter hadn't replied to her message.
Not even the safe kind—the kind they'd grown used to exchanging when words were too dangerous. A nod through text. A shared quote. A single punctuation mark that said: I still feel this.
But this time, nothing.
Eleanor's fingers hovered over her phone again, reluctant to send a second message. She didn't want to press. Winter wasn't someone you pushed. She withdrew deeper when cornered, her silence a veil and a shield.
And Eleanor—despite everything she had learned about holding space for another—could not stop wondering if she was the reason Winter had gone quiet.
She leaned back in her chair, eyes drifting up to the one photograph pinned behind her door: a black-and-white image of her first gallery debut, taken nearly twenty years ago. She looked impossibly young in it, still clinging to a version of herself that believed love could be uncomplicated.
Now? Love came layered in silence. In longing glances across lecture halls. In the ache of restraint.
But it also came with fear. And for Eleanor, fear had never spoken louder than in moments like this—when distance fell like a curtain between them and she didn't know whether it was protection or retreat.
She replayed every recent interaction.
The way Winter had lingered less at the end of class. The small hesitations in her replies. The unread expression in her eyes when Eleanor passed her in the hallway that morning.
It hadn't always been like this.
There were moments—brief but luminous—when Eleanor swore they were tethered. A shared glance across a faculty panel. A casual brush of hands as Winter handed her a sketchbook. Words never spoken but carved so clearly in expression.
But now, Eleanor felt untethered.
She feared she'd overplayed caution and underplayed care. That in trying to protect them both, she had starved the very thing that made Winter stay close: connection.
She had given Winter room, yes. But had she given her love?
She rose slowly from her chair, pacing to the window. The quad below was mostly empty. A few students crossed it with hunched shoulders and bundled scarves. None of them were Winter.
What if Winter had already made a choice?
What if Dean—bright, safe, younger—had filled the silence Eleanor had left behind?
The thought made her stomach knot.
Eleanor had spent a lifetime guarding her heart. But now, as she stood in the half-light of her office, surrounded by the quiet artifacts of a life she'd carefully constructed, she began to wonder if the cost of that protection was too high.
Because she could feel Winter slipping. And she didn't know how to stop it.
Not without risking everything.
And yet—maybe it was time to risk something.
Eleanor didn't sleep that night.
She sat in her apartment in the dark, a single lamp casting warm light over a table covered in abandoned grading and an untouched cup of tea. The hours stretched longer than usual, made brittle by the echo of everything she hadn't said.
Winter's silence had settled into something heavier now. Not a pause, but a retreat.
And Eleanor couldn't bear it anymore.
She reached for her phone. The screen glared back at her. Her thumb hovered over Winter's name in her messages. She tried once—typed Are you alright?—but deleted it before sending. It was too sterile. Too safe. And Winter didn't need safety right now. She needed honesty.
So Eleanor did something she never did. She left her apartment, coat half-zipped, scarf clutched in one hand, and headed out into the cold night air with a single goal forming like heat behind her ribs:
She was going to see Winter.
It was almost eleven when she reached the dormitory building.
She didn't care about appearances. Not tonight. If she got caught—if someone questioned why a professor was walking across campus to find a student this late—she'd figure it out later. What mattered now was the growing hollow in her chest. The fear that, by morning, it might be too late.
The front door buzzed. She waited until someone exited and slipped inside behind them.
Her palms were damp by the time she reached the third floor. She paused outside Winter's door, uncertain now, her breath uneven. A dozen doubts tried to drag her back—rules, boundaries, reputations.
But Winter wasn't just a student.
She was the one person who saw Eleanor not as a title, or a name in print, but as a person.
She knocked. Once. Then twice.
It took a full minute for the door to open.
Winter stood there in an oversized hoodie, her face washed pale by the dim hallway light. She didn't say anything. Her eyes, tired and guarded, widened when she saw who it was.
"Eleanor?"
Eleanor nodded. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be here. But I couldn't not be."
Winter said nothing. She stepped back wordlessly, and Eleanor took it for what it was: an invitation.
Inside, the room was small but personal—drawings pinned along the walls, a coffee mug filled with paintbrushes, a notebook half-open on the desk. Eleanor stood awkwardly near the door, suddenly aware of the ridiculousness of it all.
But Winter just looked at her. Waiting.
"I know something's changed," Eleanor said softly. "I know I've been… careful. Too careful. Maybe even cold. But I need you to understand—none of it meant I didn't feel this. You. I feel you, Winter."
Winter blinked, and Eleanor could see the storm behind her composure.
"You're not just a phase or a moment," Eleanor continued, voice faltering. "I haven't let myself say it because I've spent years avoiding any kind of mess. But I miss you when you're quiet. I miss your presence in a room even when you don't say a word. And tonight, I realized I was about to lose something I hadn't even been brave enough to hold properly."
Winter's voice was barely a whisper. "Why now?"
Eleanor stepped closer, slow and deliberate. "Because I'm scared. But I'm more scared of not trying. And if I've already ruined this, then… at least you'll know I tried to be honest once."
A silence passed between them—thick with all the unspoken things they'd left on paper, in eye contact, in proximity.
Then Winter stepped forward and quietly closed the door behind Eleanor.
"I didn't want you to come tonight," Winter said after a long pause. "But I needed you to."
And Eleanor, for the first time in weeks, let herself exhale.sleep