By Monday morning, Lucian had decided the rain had temporarily damaged Sebastian's judgment.

There was no other explanation for the flowers waiting beside his breakfast plate.

They were white daisies, not roses. Sebastian had remembered that Lucian thought roses looked like an apology from somebody who had forgotten an anniversary.

“Who died?” Lucian asked.

Sebastian poured coffee. “Nobody.”

“Then why are there funeral arrangements on the table?”

“Because you once said you liked daisies.”

“I was twelve.”

“You were very opinionated at twelve.”

“I'm still opinionated.”

“I've noticed.”

Lucian lifted the little card tucked among the stems. It read: For the boy who chased me through the rain. Next time, take an umbrella.

His face warmed before he'd finished reading.

“Stop looking pleased with yourself,” he muttered.

“I haven't said anything.”

“You're doing it with your eyebrows.”

Sebastian's mouth twitched. Lucian shoved the card into his pocket and attacked his toast.

At campus, the flowers became the least of his problems.

Sebastian appeared outside the art building carrying a cardboard tray with two coffees and the sketchbook Lucian had forgotten at home.

Nolan, Lucian's closest friend, stopped halfway through complaining about a sculpture assignment.

“Is that Sebastian Hayes?” Nolan whispered.

“No. It's a particularly judgmental tree.”

Sebastian approached. “You left this on the kitchen counter.”

Lucian snatched the sketchbook. “I was coming back for it.”

“You were going to miss your critique.”

“I could have borrowed paper.”

“And your favorite pencils?”

Nolan looked between them. “Do you two rehearse this?”

“Unfortunately,” Sebastian said, “he improvises.”

Lucian elbowed him. Sebastian handed over the coffee, perfectly sweetened, and brushed a smear of charcoal from Lucian's cheek with his thumb.

The touch lasted one second. It was enough to make Nolan grin like an idiot.

“Don't,” Lucian warned him.

“I didn't say anything.”

“Your face did.”

Sebastian leaned closer. “You look quite cute when you blush.”

Lucian nearly dropped the cup.

“I'm not blushing.”

“Then the building must be on fire.”

Nolan laughed so hard he had to lean against the wall.

Lucian fled into class, where he discovered the flowers' card still in his pocket. He read it twice during the critique and once more while pretending to take notes.

His instructor, Professor Reed, asked why the figures in his latest painting looked like they were about to kiss.

“They're arguing,” Lucian answered.

“Interesting,” she said. “Sometimes those are the same composition.”

By lunch, the rumor that Sebastian Hayes was courting somebody in the art department had traveled farther than Lucian's unfinished project.

Sebastian was waiting outside with a paper bag from Lucian's favorite sandwich shop.

“Do you have a schedule for embarrassing me?” Lucian demanded.

“Yes. Three times before dinner.”

“You're impossible.”

“And yet you're taking the sandwich.”

Lucian took it. He was hungry, and Sebastian knew exactly which pickles he hated.

They ate beneath the old oak beside the library. For a while neither spoke. Lucian watched Sebastian stretch his injured back carefully against the bench.

“Does it hurt?”

“Less than yesterday.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it's usually true.”

Lucian set down his sandwich. “You can tell me when it's not.”

Sebastian studied him. “I know.”

There was something startling about that simple answer. A month earlier Sebastian had barely let Lucian carry his water glass. Now he accepted concern without turning it into an argument.

Lucian reached over and straightened Sebastian's crooked scarf.

Sebastian held still, looking amused.

“Don't make a thing of it,” Lucian said.

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

That afternoon, Lucian tried to regain the upper hand.

He bought a ridiculous stuffed bear wearing a graduation cap and delivered it to Sebastian's studio during a meeting with classmates.

“For my favorite grumpy old man,” Lucian announced.

The room fell silent.

Sebastian looked at the bear, then at Lucian. “I'm twenty-five.”

“Emotionally, you're eighty.”

One of Sebastian's colleagues coughed to hide a laugh.

Sebastian placed the bear beside his laptop with solemn dignity. “Thank you. He'll supervise the interns.”

Lucian's carefully planned humiliation failed spectacularly.

Outside, he stamped his foot. “You're supposed to be embarrassed.”

“I like presents from you.”

“Even ugly ones?”

“Especially ugly ones.”

Lucian stared at him. Sebastian's expression softened, and the usual teasing fell away.

“Lucy,” he said, “I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable. Tell me if this is too much.”

Lucian looked down at the cracked pavement. The truth was more frightening than the teasing: he liked being noticed. He liked that Sebastian remembered the smallest details.

“It's not too much,” he admitted. “It's just new.”

Sebastian nodded. “We can go slowly.”

Lucian couldn't resist. “You? Slowly? You alphabetize your spices.”

“That's efficiency, not impatience.”

“Your paprika has a designated address.”

“And somehow you still can't find it.”

They laughed together. It felt easy in a way Lucian hadn't known was possible.

Before dinner, Lucian stopped at the campus print shop to collect his latest painting. The clerk had wrapped it in brown paper, but a corner had torn during transit.

Lucian inspected the damage and sighed. He had painted the oak outside the library, with two shadows touching beneath its branches.

“Is it for a class?” the clerk asked.

“Something like that.”

“Looks romantic.”

“It's a study of light.”

“Of course.”

Lucian carried the painting home with exaggerated care. Sebastian found him attempting to hide it behind the hallway coat rack.

“Is that your new work?”

“No.”

“It's wrapped in paper from the art department.”

“Could be anybody's.”

Sebastian didn't press. He simply helped Lucian move the canvas away from the radiator, where the heat might damage the paint.

Lucian watched his hands. Sebastian always handled his artwork gently, even when he was furious about everything else.

“Would you come to my student exhibition?” Lucian asked abruptly.

“I already marked the date.”

“You don't know the date.”

“Thursday, November twelfth. Six to eight.”

Lucian stared. “You remembered?”

“I remember things that matter to you.”

Lucian looked at the canvas. For the first time, he considered giving Sebastian the painting when the exhibition was over.

“Don't wear your boring gray tie,” he said.

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Sebastian promised to find a suitably scandalous tie, and Lucian spent the next ten minutes imagining what that might look like.

At dinner, Margaret called to ask whether they were getting along. Lucian said Sebastian was terrorizing the university with unsolicited sandwiches.

Margaret sounded delighted. “He never brought me lunch when he was a teenager.”

“Mom,” Sebastian warned from across the table.

“I'm just observing.”

After the call, Lucian leaned across the table and kissed Sebastian's cheek.

He'd intended it as a swift counterattack. Instead, he saw Sebastian go completely still.

“Ha!” Lucian exclaimed. “You can blush too.”

Sebastian touched his cheek as though checking whether the kiss had actually happened.

“Apparently,” he said.

Lucian went upstairs victorious. On the landing, he remembered the forgotten sketchbook and returned to Sebastian's study.

The door stood partly open. Sebastian was in the kitchen, so Lucian stepped inside and searched the desk.

He found the sketchbook beneath a shallow wooden box. The lid had slipped aside.

Inside lay a faded movie ticket, a ribbon from a childhood school fair, and a photograph of Lucian at nine, grinning with missing front teeth.

Underneath were more photographs: birthdays, summer trips, graduation ceremonies. Years of Lucian, carefully kept.

He lifted the oldest one with trembling fingers.

Sebastian had saved them all.