The third time they shared the study room, Ashcroft arrived early. He told himself it was out of habit.
Iris arrived five minutes late, trailing a breeze of cold air and the faintest scent of peppermint ink. Her satchel hit the table with a thud. She unwrapped a biscuit from her pocket and took a bite mid-sentence.
"Hope you brought your best arguments today, professor. I've come armed with sugar and sleep deprivation."
Ashcroft gave her a long, flat look. "It's barely four o'clock."
"Exactly. Prime chaos hour."
She dropped into the seat across from him, unbothered. Her notebook was covered in margin doodles—tiny foxes, looping arrows, and one very smug-looking caricature of Ashcroft with a speech bubble that read 'Actually, that's a fallacy.'
He didn't comment. But his mouth twitched.
Just a little.
They worked in a rhythm that was becoming familiar—his neat stacks, her organized chaos. She muttered when she thought, scribbled when she argued, and chewed on her pen when he made a good point.
At one point, she reached for a book, but their fingers touched again. She didn't pull away.
"Two times makes it a pattern," she said under her breath, eyes still on the page.
Ashcroft didn't answer. But his hand lingered a moment longer than necessary.
She tore a page from her notebook and slid it toward him. It was a list of counterpoints. Half of them were valid. The other half were deliberately ridiculous.
One read: 'Counterpoint: Free will is fake, and so are neckties.'
He stared at it.
She grinned. "That one's personal."
"Your logic is deteriorating."
"My snacks are running out. Correlation?"
"Perhaps causation."
She laughed—actual laughter this time, not the polite kind. It surprised him.
He passed her a biscuit from a paper-wrapped bundle he'd brought. She blinked at it like he'd just handed her a gemstone.
"Is this... peace?"
"A ceasefire."
She took it like it was sacred.
As the sun dipped low, golden light spilled across the desk. Iris leaned forward, elbow on the table, chin resting in her palm.
"You ever wonder what you'd be doing if you weren't here?"
Ashcroft didn't answer right away. Then, quietly:
"No."
She looked at him for a long second. Something in her softened—but only for a moment.
"Well," she said, "that makes one of us."
She stood, stretching, collecting her papers with far less urgency than usual.
Before she left, she added a line to the margin of his notebook while he wasn't looking.
He didn't notice until she was gone.
It said: 'See? You smiled.'