𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐞 ─────⋆⋅★𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩é𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘵

𝟎𝟒 | 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮

𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐀𝐠𝐨

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬

I was packing up my things after my afternoon lecture, the weight of Baudelaire's words still pressing against my thoughts. The room was steeped in silence, the kind that stretches into corners and makes time seem softer.

I didn't mind it. The quiet.

I tucked my battered copy of Les Fleurs du Mal into my bag, its dog-eared pages a reminder of all the restless nights spent underlining passages in pencil. I was heading towards the door, eyes lost in the floor's cracked marble patterns, when I nearly walked right into him.

Timothée was leaning against the stone archway, a shadow against the dim light. He stood with that effortless grace that always felt a little out of place, as though the world bent just slightly to accommodate him. His hood was pulled low, sunglasses perched on his nose, an absurd contrast to the fading afternoon gloom. But of course, on him, it didn't look absurd at all. He was a line from a poem you hadn't quite deciphered yet, but the rhythm caught in your chest.

For a moment, I blinked, thinking he was some trick of the light.

But there he was.

"Cara," he said, the sound of my name soft, like it belonged to the air around him.

I froze, my bag halfway over my shoulder, startled. "What are you doing here?"

He didn't move right away, just pushed off the wall, sunglasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, revealing those eyes that always seemed to hold too much and nothing at all. His gaze settled on me with that familiar half-smile tugging at his lips, like he'd just stumbled upon a private joke.

"I told you I'd see you again," he said, his voice low, intimate, as if the stone walls around us were leaning in to listen. The certainty in his tone was unsettling, like it was something I should've always known.

I glanced around, the hushed space of the university suddenly feeling too small. "How'd you find me?"

His smile deepened, casual and knowing. "Adèle." He shrugged, leaning closer, his tone mocking. "The Sorbonne, impressive. Hiding that, weren't you?"

I studied him, trying to gauge his intention. The sunglasses, the hoodie, the way he stood too close, as if defying the unspoken rules of space. "What's with the sunglasses?" I nodded towards them. "It's going to rain."

He glanced up briefly, as if daring the sky to contradict him. "Not if I can help it." There was something offhand in his voice, but his eyes held mine with a quiet intensity. "I want to take you somewhere."

The way he said it, simple but deliberate, felt like a challenge wrapped in a secret. A dare.

"Where?" I asked, though the question didn't feel entirely necessary.